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THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER 



THIS AND THAT AND 
THE OTHER 



BY 



Ha BELLOC 



Author of "On Anvthing," "On Everything," "On 
Something," etCi 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1912 



;^ 



COPTBIGHT, 1912, BY 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
Published, November, 1913 



£'CI.A320891 



/ 



EVAN CHARTER IS 



PREFACE TO THE READER 

Since I am assured that this book requires a 
Preface I must attempt to write one, but I can- 
not conceive upon what lines it should run un- 
less they be an apology for writing of so many 
things, and in very many different moods, and 
in so many different ways. 

A Preface is intended to introduce to the 
Reader the air in which the book that follows 
must be taken, but what air attaches in common 
to historical reconstructions, to abstract vaga- 
ries, to stories, to jests, to the impression of 
a storm, and to annoyance with a dead scien- 
tist? 

The sort of introduction which a book like 
this needs is like that which a man might find 
to say who should have to deliver at a house 
a ton of coals, some second-hand books, a war- 
rant, several weather forecasts and a great 
quantity of dust. I do not know how such a man 
would make himself pleasant to the homestead, 
vii 



PREFACE 

or prepare for the reception of so mixed a 
load. 

But now I come to think of it the parallel is 
not quite just. For the man with that heap of 
rubbish in his cart would be bound to deliver 
the same, and proportionately to annoy the re- 
cipient. But you are not bound to buy, to bor- 
row, or even to pick up this book. And even if 
you do you are not bound to read it. If you 
do read it I advise you to read the Essay be- 
ginning on page forty-five ; the history begin- 
ning on page one hundred and forty-three ; the 
denunciation of the very wickedest sort of men, 
which I have begun on page one hundred and 
three ; the sort of thing which Shakespeare suf- 
fered, which you will find on page one hundred 
and eighty-six. When you have waded through 
all that you can console yourself by reading 
the last essay, which is intended to console you. 
I hope it will. Farewell. 

H. Belloc. 

P.S. I have never read a Preface in my 
life, and I suppose you will not read this, 
viii 



CONTENTS 



I 


An Open Letter to a Young 




Diplomatist . 


1 


II 


On Pedants 


12 


III 


On Atheism 


22 


IV 


On Fame .... 


28 


V 


On Rest .... 


33 


VI 


On Discovery . 


38 


VII 


On Inns .... 


45 


VIII 


On Rows .... 


56 


IX 


The Pleasant Place 


62 


X 


On Omens .... 


82 


XI 


The Book .... 


89 


XII 


The Servants of the Rich 


103 


XIII 


The Joke .... 


111 


XIV 


The Spy .... 


122 


XV 


The Young People . 


128 


XVI 


Ethandune 


135 


XVII 


The Death of Robert th] 


E 




Strong .... 


143 


XVIII 


The Crooked Streets 


153 


XIX 


The Place Apart . 


. 162 


XX 


The Ebro Plain 


170 


XXI 


The Little River . 


. 178 



IX 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXII Some Letters of Shake- 
speare's Time . .186 
XXIII On Acquaintance with 

THE Great . . ,198 
XXIV On Lying . . . .207 
XXV The Dupe . . . .213 
XXVI The Love of England . 219 
XXVII The Storm . . . .224 
XXVIII The Valley . . .233 
XXIX A Conversation in An- 
dorra .... 242 
XXX Paris and the East . , 253 
XXXI The Human Charlatan . 262 
XXXII The Barbarians . . 273 

XXXIII On Knowing the Past . 284 

XXXIV The Higher Criticism . 296 
XXXV The Fanatic . . .307 

XXXVI A Leading Article . .314 
XXXVII The Obituary Notice . 320 
XXXVIII The " Merry Rome " Col- 
umn .... 327 
XXXIX Open Letter to a Young 

Parasite .... 335 

XL On Dropping Anchor . 344 



THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER 



AN OPEN LETTER TO A YOUNG 
DIPLOMATIST 

My Very Dear Young Diplomatist, 

My life-long friendship with your father the 
Old Diplomatist, must excuse me for the liberty 
I am now taking. 

I am infinitely concerned that your career 
should be a successful one and that before you 
perish of senile decay you should have held the 
position of Ambassador in at least three great 
capitals of Europe. You certainly will not at- 
tain to such eminence unless you are early in- 
structed by some competent authority in the 
mysteries of your trade, and as I am singularly 
well placed for giving you private information 
upon these, I shall immediately proceed to do so. 
I beg you to remember at the very outset of 
your responsible profession what destinies will 
lie in your hands. The lives of countless inno- 
1 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

cent men will depend upon your judgment and 
upon your provocation or restraint of some 
great war. The principal fortunes of our time 
will be largely dependent upon your decisions 
and will always fluctuate according to the ad- 
vice you may give your Government. More im- 
portant still, the honour of your country and 
its splendour before the world will hang upon 
your good sense and foresight. Weigh, there- 
fore, I beg of you, before you undertake so high 
a function, its duties and its perils, and all that 
you may have to answer for at the Last Day, 
if indeed (as so many still pretend) human 
beings are answerable in the long run for the 
good or evil they have done upon earth. Do 
not, however, be deterred by any shirking of 
consequences, or by what Tennyson has well 
called " Craven fears of being great " from the 
tremendous task which your noble calling in- 
volves. Some one must undertake it, and why 
not you? Having well balanced in your mind 
these major things, next note carefully, I beg 
of you, the rules I am about to lay down. 
2 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

The first of these is that you shall possess 
yourself of an income of not less than $2,000 
a year. You will immediately protest, and with 
justice, that it is impossible upon such a revenue 
to impress the nobility of Austria, of Russia, or 
even of Montenegro, with those qualities which 
invariably accompany great wealth; but your 
objection is a youthful and improvident one. 
You will not be required at this outset of your 
activities to dazzle by any lavish expenditure 
the luxurious Courts of the countries I have 
just named. You are too young to be entrusted 
with any such duty and at the most it will be 
incumbent upon you to expend no more upon 
appearances than what is necessary for making 
a decent show at the dinner table of others. It 
is true that from time to time you will have to 
entertain at a meal, and at your own charges, 
a journalist perhaps or even a traveller, but 
from a narrow and cautious observation of some 
several hundred instances I have discovered that 
of an average of two hundred meals consumed 
by Young Diplomatists in the space of a year 
3 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

at places of public resort, no more than 83 at 
the most, nor less than 51 at the least, were a 
burden upon their purses. And by manage- 
ment of the simplest sort you can enjoy the 
hospitality of others at least three times as 
often as you are compelled to extend it your- 
self. Moreover, you will have this great ad- 
vantage, that you will know the habits of the 
capital in which you reside and can give your 
guest the impression of having dined well amid 
luxurious surroundings, although as a matter 
of fact he shall have dined exceedingly ill amid 
surroundings which I tremble to remember: for 
I also have been in Arcadia. 

If I have set down such a figure as $2,000 it 
is merely because that sum has been decided 
upon by those experts in the profound art of 
International Politics who determine the mini- 
mum for the Court of St. James. 

Let us leave this sordid matter and consider 
next the higher part of your mission, in which 
connection I will first speak of what your cloth- 
ing and demeanour should be. 
4 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

It is not true that the presence of a crease 
clearly emphasised down the front of each 
trouser leg is a necessity or even an advantage 
to the conduct of World-wide affairs. Upon 
the contrary, I have come to the settled conclu- 
sion after no little review of the matter that 
a mere hint at such a line is not only sufficient, 
but preferable to any emphasis of it. 

You may object to me that the eminent man 
who advised and all but carried out the occupa- 
tion of the South Pole by the troops of Mono- 
motapa six years ago, stretched his trousers in 
a machine every night, or, to speak more accu- 
rately, ordered his valet under pain of death to 
provide that detail. It is true. But it was not 
because of, it was in spite of, this habit that 
the Baron brought his pigs to market, and 
annexed to the dominion of his Sovereign those 
regions which were abandoned the next year 
with the utmost precipitation. 

I yield to no one in my admiration of his 
amazing subtlety and comprehensive coup 
d'oeil; but I have it upon unimpeachable testi- 
5 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

mony that the too great rigidity of his gar- 
ments formed, until the very last moment, an 
obstacle to the success of his plans. I give it to 
you, therefore, as a general rule, that you 
should do no more than put the trousers upon 
a table, and pass your hand lightly over them 
before putting them on ; in this way you will 
produce such a crease as will suggest, and no 
more than suggest, the feature upon which I 
have detained you in this paragraph. 

More important even than your garments will 
be your method of address and in particular 
your conversation with women. Here I can 
only give you the advice which I fear may seem 
somewhat general and vague, that you should 
never neglect upon the one hand to engage in 
a dialogue of some sort, nor venture, upon 
the other, to be drawn into a violent alterca- 
tion. 

Thus, if it be your good fortune (as it was 
once mine) to sit upon a marble terrace over- 
looking the Mediterranean Sea, and there drink 
a Chianti of that sort which the French call 
6 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

" Iron Filings " accompanied bj the flesh of 
goats, it would be noted disastrously against 
you if you refused during the whole course of 
the meal to utter a word to the lady upon your 
left or to the lady upon your right. But it 
will advance you in no way if at the second 
course you allow your ungovernable temper to 
become your master, and to tell either of these 
flanking parties what you thought of them in 
the heat of the moment. Any attempt to re- 
trieve your position after such an excess by loud 
appeals to the justice of your cause would but 
degrade you further in the eyes of your chief, 
and you might look in vain during all succeed- 
ing years for an appointment to the conduct of 
important and delicate negotiations between any 
two great powers. No : under such circum- 
stances (to take a concrete instance) don't men- 
tion trivial things of literature or of the 
weather, but discover something novel in the 
aspect of the sea, or recite for the advantage of 
the company (but at intervals of not less 
than five minutes) some terse falsehood that 
7 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

may have occurred to you, and preferably one 
damaging to the moral character of an innocent 
man. 

Never contradict any statement whatsoever 
that may be made in your presence, at least in 
public. Nor, upon your part, make any affir- 
mation which might lead to a contradiction but, 
after waiting until you have heard an expres- 
sion of opinion from that person whom you 
would address, agree with it, differing only in 
just so much as will lend salt to the remainder 
of the delightful interchange. Let it appear 
in all you say that you are at once more learned 
than those about you, and yet believe them to 
be more learned than yourself. When you 
allude to the Great never do so in terms of 
familiarity, even if the Great be your own 
Uncle, but rather in terms of distant admira- 
tion or of still more distant contempt. Above 
all — this I most urgently charge you — confess 
in the most open manner a complete igno- 
rance of how money is made, whether honour- 
ably or dishonourably. This last precept is the 
8 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

more difficult to fulfil when you consider that 
in the high-bred world of European gentlemen 
in which you will find yourself, money is very 
nearly the sole subject of discourse. 

There remains to be dealt with the last exer- 
cise whereby some important mission confided 
to you may be brought to an issue. 

I will suppose that a cautious Government 
is making an experiment of your abilities and 
has despatched you for the negotiation of a 
Commercial Treaty with the Viceroy of Serin- 
gapatam : a very usual test for the judging of a 
man's capacities. 

You will, during the weeks in which sundry 
varlets draft letters, exchange views, consider 
schedules, and argue tariffs, make it your par- 
ticular care to visit His Excellency and His 
Excellency's Wife, to play tennis with His Ex- 
cellency's daughters once or twice, but more 
certainly to pursue in company with His Excel- 
lency's sons some animal which may be killed 
without any serious risk. 

When the preliminaries of the Treaty have 
9 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

been agreed to and the moment has come for 
fixing your signature thereto, it is in the essence 
of good breeding that you should perform the 
act quite simply with some ordinary pen, such 
for instance as the fountain pen which you carry 
in your pocket, and I need hardly say that jokes 
framed for the occasion, or any flippancy of 
demeanour during the solemnity would be in 
equally bad taste. You shall (if my memory 
of many such occasions serves me right) spread 
your left hand (which you will previously have 
washed very carefully) outwards over the paper, 
arch your eyebrows somewhat, say to your sal- 
aried friend, "Where do I sign?" and then 
quickly put down your name in the place indi- 
cated, and that in a very ordinary manner. 
These are the little things that betray not only 
the Gentleman but the Arbiter of the World's 
Destinies. 

Space forbids me to deal with the minor mat- 
ters of religion, affection and morals. I only 
beg you to keep all three under a severe re- 
straint, and in particular the first, too great a 
10 



TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 

zeal in which has early ruined many a rising 
young fellow. 

Good-bye, my dear Young Diplomatist. If 
they send you to Paris ask for Berlin; and if 
they send you to Berlin kill yourself. 

I am, in fond remembrance of your father, 
Your devoted friend, 

H. Belloc. 



11 



n 

ON PEDANTS 

The just and genial man will attempt to take 
pleasure in what surrounds him when it is ca- 
pable of giving him amusement, always suppos- 
ing that it does not move him to wrath. I mean, 
that a man who is both just and companionable 
will rather laugh than turn sour at the discom- 
forts of this world. For example, consider 
the Pedant. 

Never was such an exasperating fellow ; never 
was there a time when he ran riot as he does 
now ! On which account many are bewildered 
and many sad, they know not why, and many 
who know their time are soured, but a few (and 
I hope they may be an increasing few) are 
neither bewildered nor saddened nor soured by 
this spectacle, but claim to be made merry — and 
are. 

What is a Pedant? 

12 



ON PEDANTS 

There are many fixed human types, and every 
one of them has a name. There is the Priest, 
there is the Merchant, there is the Noble — and 
there is the Pedant. Each of these types are 
known by a distinctive name, and to most men 
they call up a clear image, but because they are 
types of mankind they are a little too compli- 
cated for definition. Nevertheless I will have a 
try at the Pedant. 

The essence of the Pedant is twofold, first 
that he takes his particular science for some- 
thing universal, second, that he holds with the 
Grip of Faith certain set phrases in that science 
which he has been taught. I say " with the Grip 
of Faith " ; it is the only metaphor applicable ; 
he has for these phrases a violent affection. Not 
only does he not question them, but he does not 
know that they can be questioned. When he 
repeats them it is in a fixed and hierarchic voice. 
When they are denied he does not answer, but 
flies into a passion which, were he destined to 
an accession of power, might in the near future 
turn to persecution. 

13 



ON PEDANTS 

Alas ! that the noblest thing in man should be 
perverted to such a use; for Faith when it is 
exercised upon those unprovable things which 
are in tune with things provable, illuminates 
and throws into a right perspective every- 
thing we know. But the Faith of the Ped- 
ant! . 

The Pedant crept in upon the echpse of our 
religion ; his reign is therefore brief. Perhaps 
he is also but a reflection of that vast addition 
to material knowledge which glorified the last 
century. Perhaps it is the hurry, and the rapid- 
ity of our declining time, which makes it neces- 
sary for us to accept ready-made phrases and 
to act on rules of thumb good or bad. Perhaps 
it is the whirlpool and turmoil of classes which 
has pitchforked into the power of the Pedant 
whole groups of men who used to escape him. 
Perhaps it is the Devil. Whatever it is it is 
there. 

You see it more in England than in any other 
European country. It runs all through the 
fibre of our modern literature and our modern 
14 



ON PEDANTS 

comment, like the strings of a cancer. Come, 
let us have a few examples. 

There is " the Anglo-Saxon race." It does 
not exist. It is not there. It is no more there 
than Baal or Moloch or the Philosopher's Stone, 
or the Universal Mercury. There never was any 
such race. There were once hundreds and hun- 
dreds of years ago a certain number of people 
(how many we do not know) talking a local 
German dialect in what is now Hampshire and 
Berkshire. To this dialect historians have been 
pleased to give the name of Anglo-Saxon, and 
that is all it means. If you pin your Pedant 
down to clear expression, saying to him, 
" Come, now, fellow, out with it ! What is this 
Anglo-Saxon race of yours .?" you find that 
he means a part (and a part only) of such peo- 
ple in the world as habitually speak the English 
language, or one of its dialects : that part only 
which in a muddy way he sympathises with ; that 
part which is more or less of his religion, and 
more or less conformable to his own despicable 
self. It does not include the Irish, it does not in- 
15 



ON PEDANTS 

elude the negroes of the United States, but it 
does include a horde of German Jews, and a 
mixed rabble of every origin under the sun 
sweating in the slums of the New World. 

Why then you may ask, and you may well 
ask, does the man use the phrase " Anglo- 
Saxon " at all? 

The answer is simple. It smacks — or did 
originally smack — of learning. Among the in- 
numerable factors of modem Europe one, and 
only one, was the invasion of the Eastern part 
of this island (and only the Eastern part) by 
pirates from beyond the North Sea. The most 
of these pirates (but by no means all) belonged 
either to a loose conglomeration of tribes whom 
the Romans called Saxones, or to a little mari- 
time tribe called Angles. True, the full knowl- 
edge of that event is a worthy subject of study ; 
there is a good week's reading upon it in orig- 
inal authorities, and I can imagine a conscien- 
tious man who would read slowly and make 
notes, spending a fortnight upon the half dozen 
contemporary sources of knowledge we possess 
16 



ON PEDANTS 

upon these little barbarian peoples. But, Lord ! 
what a superstructure the Pedant has raised 
upon that narrow base ! 

Then there is "alcohol"; what "alcohol" 
does to the human body, and the rest of it ; to 
read the absurd fellows one would imagine that 
this stuff " alcohol " was something you could 
see and handle ; something with which humanity 
was familiar, like Beef, Oak, Sand, Chalk, and 
the rest. Not a bit of it. It does not exist any 
more than the *' Anglo-Saxon race " exists. It 
is a chemical extraction. And in connection 
with it you have something very common to all 
such folly, to wit, gross insufficiency even in 
the line to which its pedantry is devoted. For 
this chemical abstraction of theirs may be ex- 
pressed in many forms and it is only in one of 
these forms that they mouth out their inter- 
minable and pretentious dogmas. Humanity, 
healthy European humanity that is, the jolly 
place called Christendom, has drunk from imme- 
morial time wine and beer and cider. It has 
been noticed (also from immemorial time) that 
17 



ON PEDANTS 

if a man drank too much of any of these things 
he got drunk, and that if he got drunk often his 
health and capacity declined. There is the im- 
portant fact which humanity has never missed, 
and without which the rhodomontades of the 
Pedant would have no foothold. It is because 
his pretended knowledge relates to a real evil 
with which humanity is acquainted that people 
listen to him at all on the subject. He ill re- 
quites their confidence ! He exploits and bam- 
boozles them to the top of their bent. He terri- 
fies the weak victims (and the weaker witnesses) 
of drunkenness and often, I am sorry to say, 
picks their pockets as well. I can call to mind as 
I write more than one Pedant who by harping on 
this word " alcohol " has got very considerable 
sums out of the public. Well, it is the public's 
fault ! Vult decipi et decipiatur. And a mur- 
rain on it — also a quinsy ! 

Then there is " the Fourth Gospel " : your 
Pedant never calls it the Gospel of S. John, as 
his fathers have done before him for two thou- 
sand years. He must give it a pretentious name 
18 



ON PEDANTS 

and then, because it happens to be cram-full 
of Christian doctrine, he must deny its authen- 
ticity. There is not a vestige of proof against 
that authenticity, nor for that matter a vestige 
of sound historical proof in favour of it. Like 
everything else in the fundamental structure of 
the Faith from the Mass to the Apocalypse, it 
has for witness the tradition of the Church, and 
is no more acceptable as an historic document 
of the type of the " Agricola " or the " Cati- 
line Orations " than any one of the other Gos- 
pels. There is not an event mentioned in the 
whole of the New Testament which has true his- 
toric value. The whole thing depends upon Be- 
lief, and Belief in a corporate teaching body. 
Yet how your Pedant has flourished upon this 
same Fourth Gospel ! Now he is " reverently 
accepting it," now " reluctantly rejecting it "; 
he fondles it as a cat does a mouse, and when 
you try to come to handgrips with him he will 
first (taking you for a simple and unlearned 
man) put you off with silly technicahties. You 
have but to read up the meaning of these tech- 
19 



ON PEDANTS 

nicalitles in the dictionary to find that he is 
talking through his hat. He has no evidence, 
and there can be no evidence, as to whether the 
Gospel was or was not written by the tradi- 
tional figure which the Catholic Church calls S. 
John, and all he has to say on the matter would 
not tempt the most gullible gambler to invest a 
penny on a ten-to-one chance. 

Then there is " the conflict between religion 
and science." What the Pedant really means 
when he uses that phrase (and he has not only 
used it threadbare but has fed it by the ton to 
the recently enfranchised and to the vulgar in 
general) is the conflict between a mystical doc- 
trine and every-day common sense. That con- 
flict has always existed and always will exist. 
If you say to any man who has not heard of 
such a thing before " I will kill you and yet you 
will survive " or " This water is not ordinary 
water, it does more than wash you or assuage 
your thirst, it will also cure blindness, and make 
whole a diseased limb," the man who has not 
heard such things before, will call you a liar; 
20 



ON PEDANTS 

of course he will, and small blame to him. We 
can only generalise from repeated experience, 
and oddities and transcendental things are not 
within the field of repeated experience. But 
" science " has nothing to do with that. The 
very fact that they use the word religion is 
enough to show the deplorable insufficiency of 
their minds. What religion.'' Your Pedant is 
far too warped and hypocritical to say exactly 
what he means even in so simple a case; so he 
uses the word " religion," a term which may 
apply to Thugs with their doctrine of the sanc- 
tity of murder, or to the Mahommedans who are 
not bound to any transcendental doctrine but 
only to a Rule of Life, or to Buddhists who 
have but a philosophy, or to Plymouth Brethren, 
or to Head Hunters. 

I said at the beginning of this that the Ped- 
ant was food for laughter, rather than for 
anger. 

Humph ! 



21 



Ill 

ON ATHEISM 

The Atheist is he that has forgotten God. He 
that denies God may do so in many innocent 
ways, and is an Atheist in form, but is not con- 
demnable as such. Thus one man will reason 
by contradiction that there can be no God. 
If there were a God (says he), how could 
such things be? This man has not read or 
does not know sufficient to his purpose, or is 
not wide enough. His purpose is Truth, so he 
is not to be condemned. Another will say, 
" There is no God," meaning, " There is none 
that I have heard called God " : as, the figure 
of an old man ; some vengeful spirit ; an ab- 
surdity taught him by fools ; and so forth. 
Another also will say, " There is no God," as 
he would say, " Thus do I solve this riddle ! " 
He has played a game, coming to a conclusion 
of logic, and supposes himself right by the 



ON ATHEISM 

rules of the game. Nor is he more to be con- 
demned than one who shall prove, not that 
God is not, but that God is, by similar ways. 
For though this last man proves truth, and 
that first man falsehood, yet each is only con- 
cerned with proving, and not with making good 
or standing up for the Truth, so that it shall 
be established. Neither would found in the 
mind something unshakeable, but each would 
rather bring a process to its conclusion for 
neatness. 

We call that man Atheist who, thinking or 
unthinking, waking or sleeping, knows not God ; 
and when it is brought to him that either God 
is not or is, would act as though the question 
mattered nothing. Such an Atheist makes 
nothing of God's judgments nor of his com- 
mands. He does not despise them but will have 
them absent, as he will have God absent also. 
Nor is he a rebel but rather an absconder. 

Of Atheism you may see that it is proper 
to a society and not to a man, so that Atheists 
are proper to an Atheist Commonwealth, and 
23 



ON ATHEISM 

this because we find God in mankind or lose 
him there. 

Rousseau would have no Atheist in the Re- 
public. All other opinion he thought tolerable, 
but this intolerable because through it was loos- 
ened every civil bond. But if a Commonwealth 
be not Atheist no Atheist will be within it, since 
it is through men and their society that one man 
admits God. No one quite lonely could under- 
stand or judge whether of God's existence or of 
much lesser things. A man quite lonely could 
not but die long before he was a man grown. 
He would have no speech or reason. Also a 
man Atheist in a Commonwealth truly worship- 
ping would be abhorrent as a traitor with us 
and would stand silent. How, then, would 
Rousseau not tolerate the Atheist in his Re- 
public, seeing that if his Republic were not 
Atheist no Atheist could be therein.-^ Of this 
contradiction the solution is that false doctrine 
of any kind is partially hidden and striving in 
the minds of men before one man shall become 
its spokesman. Now of false doctrine when it is 
24 



ON ATHEISM 

thus blind and under water nothing can be either 
tolerated or proscribed. The ill-ease of it is felt 
but no magistrate can seize it anywhere. But 
when one man brings it up to reason and arms 
it with words, then has it been bom (as it were) 
into the world, and can be tried and judged, ac- 
cepted or expelled. 

No Commonwealth has long stood that was 
Atheist, yet many have been Atheist a little 
before they died: as some men lose the savour 
of meats, and the colours and sounds of things 
also a little before they die. 

A Commonwealth fallen into this palsy sees 
no merit in God's effect of Justice, but makes 
a game of law. In peril, as in battle or ship- 
wreck, each man will save himself. In com- 
merce man will cozen man. The Commonwealth 
grown Atheist lets the larger prey upon the 
less, until all are eaten up. 

They say that a man not having seen salt 

or knowing that such a thing as salt might be 

and even denying that salt could be (since he 

had not seen it), might yet very livelily taste 

25 



ON ATHEISM 

the saltness of the sea. So it is with men who 
still love Justice, though they have lost Religion. 
For these men are angered by evil-doing, and 
will risk their bodies in pity and in indignation. 
They therefore truly serve God in whose essence 
Justice resides, and of whom the Effect in So- 
ciety is Justice. But what shall we say of a 
man who speaks of salt as a thing well known, 
and yet finds no division between his well and the 
water of the sea.? And that is the Atheist case. 
When men of a mean sinfulness purchase a seat 
of judgment, and therein, while using the word 
" God," care nothing for right but consider 
the advantage of their aged limbs and bellies, 
or of the fellow rich they drink with, then they 
are Atheist indeed. 

That Commonwealth also is Atheist in which 
the rulers will use the fear of God for a cheat, 
hoping thereby to make foolish men work for 
them, or give up their goods, or accept insult 
and tyranny. It is so ordered that this trick 
most powerfully slings back upon its authors, 
and that the populace are now moved at last 
26 



ON ATHEISM 

not by empty sentences which have God's name 
in them, but by lively devils. In the end of 
such cheats the rich men who so lied are mur- 
dered and by a side wind God comes to his 
own. 

One came to a Courtier who had risen high 
in the State by flattery and cowardice, but 
who had a keen wit. To this Courtier he pro- 
pounded a certain scheme which would betray 
the Commonwealth, and this the Courtier agreed 
to. But when he had done so he said : " Either 
God is or is not. If he is not, why then we have 
chosen well." 

This instance is a mark and Atheism is judged 
by it. For if God is not, then all falsehoods, 
though each prove the rest false, are each true, 
and every evil is its own good, and there is 
confusion everywhere. But if God is, then the 
world can stand. Now that the world does 
stand all men know and live by, even those who, 
not in a form of words but in the heart, deny 
its Grand Principle. 



27 



IV 

ON FAME 

Fame is that repute among men which gives 
us pleasure. It needs much repetition, but also 
that repetition honourable. Of all things de- 
sired Fame least fulfils the desire for it ; for if 
Fame is to be very great a man must be dead 
before it is more than a shoot ; he therefore has 
not the enjoyment of it (as it would seem). 
Again, Fame while a man lives is always tar- 
nished by falsehood; for since few can observe 
him, and less know him, he must have Fame for 
work which he does not do and forego Fame 
for work which he knows deserves it. 

Fame has no proper ending to it, when it is 
first begun, as have things belonging to other 
appetites, nor is any man satiated with it at any 
time. Upon the contrary, the hunger after it 
will lead a man forward madly always to some 
28 



ON FAME 

sort of disaster, whether of disappointment in 
the soul, or of open dishonour. 

Fame is not to be despised or trodden under 
as a thing not to be sought, for no man is free 
of the desire of it, nor can any man believe that 
desire to be an imperfection in him unless he 
desire at the same time something greater than 
Fame, and even then there is a flavour of Fame 
certain to attach to his achievement in the 
greater thing. No one can say of Fame, " I 
contemn it " ; as a man can say of titles, " I con- 
temn them." Nor can any man say of the love 
of Fame, " This is a thing I should cast from 
me as evil," as a man may say of lust when it is 
inordinate, that is, out of place. Nor can any 
man say of Fame, " It is a little thing," for if he 
says that he is less or more than a man. 

The love of Fame is the mobile of all great 
work in which also man is in the image of God, 
who not only created but took pleasure in what 
he did and, as we know, is satisfied by praise 
thereof. 

In what way, then, shall men treat Fame? 
29 



ON FAME 

How shall they seek it, or hope to use It if 
obtained? To these questions it is best an- 
swered that a man should have for Fame a 
natural appetite, not forced nor curiously en- 
tertained ; it must be present in him if he would 
do noble things. Yet if he makes the Fame 
of those things, and not those things themselves 
his chief business, then not only will he pursue 
Fame to his hurt, but also Fame will miss him. 
Though he should not disregard it yet he must 
not pursue it to himself too much, but he will 
rightly make of it in difficult times a great con- 
solation. 

When Fame comes upon a man well before 
death then must he most particularly beware 
of it, for is it then most dangerous. Neither 
must he, having achieved it, relax effort nor 
(a much greater peril) think he has done his 
work because some Fame now attaches thereto. 

Some say that after a man has died the 
spreading of his earthly Fame is still a pleasure 
to him among greater scenes : but this is doubt- 
ful. One thing is certain. Fame is enjoyable 
30 



ON FAME 

in good things accomplished ; bitter, noisome and 
poisonous in all other things — whether it be the 
Fame of things thought to be accomplished but 
not accomplished, or Fame got by accident, or 
Fame for evil things concealed because they are 
evil. 

The judgment of Fame is this: That many 
men having done great things of a good sort 
have not Fame. And that many men have Fame 
who have done but little things and most of 
them evil. The virtue of Fame is that it nour- 
ishes endeavour. The peril of Fame is that it 
leads men towards itself, and therefore into in- 
anities and sheer loss. But Fame has a fruit, 
which is a sort of satisfaction coming from our 
communion with mankind. 

They that believe they deserve Fame though 
they lack it may be consoled in this: that soon 
they shall be concerned with much more lasting 
things, and things more immediate and more 
true: just as a man who misses some entertain- 
ment at a show will console himself if he knows 
that shortly he shall meet his love. They that 
31 



ON FAME 

have Fame may correct its extravagances by the 
same token : remembering that shortly they will 
be so occupied that this earthly Fame of theirs 
will seem a toy. Old men know this well. 



ON REST 

Rest is not the conclusion of labour but the 
recreation of power. It seems a reward because 
it fulfils a need : but that need being filled, Rest 
is but an extinction and a nothingness. So we 
do not pray for Rest; but (in a just religion) 
we pray after this life for refreshment, light 
and peace — not for Rest. 

Rest is only for a little while, as also is labour 
only for a little while : each demanding the other 
as a supplement; yet is Rest in some intervals 
a necessary ground for seed, and without Rest 
to protect the sprouting of the seed no good 
thing ever grew. 

Of many follies in a Commonwealth concern- 
ing Rest the chief is that Rest is not needed for 
all effort therein. Thus one man at leisure will 
obtain work of another for many days without 
a sufficiency of Rest for that other and think 



ON REST 

to profit by this. So he may: but he profits 
singly, and when many rich do so by the poor 
it is like one eating his own flesh, since the 
withdrawal of Rest from those that labour will 
soon eat up the Commonwealth itself. 

Much that men do with most anxiety is for 
the establishment of Rest. Wise men have 
often ordered gardens carefully for years, in 
order to enjoy Rest at last. Beds also are de- 
vised best when they give the deepest interval of 
repose and are surrounded by artifice with pro- 
longed silence, made of quiet strong wood and 
well curtained from the morning light. It is so 
with rooms removed from the other rooms 
of a house, and with days set apart from 
labour, and with certain kinds of companion- 
ship. 

Undoubtedly the regimen of Rest for men is 
that of sleep, and sleep is a sort of medicine to 
Rest, and again a true expression of it. For 
though these two. Rest and Sleep, are not the 
same yet without sleep no man can think of 
Rest nor has Rest any one better body or way 
34 



ON REST 

of being than this thing Sleep. For in sleep 
a man utterly sinks down in proportion as it is 
deep and good into the centre of things and 
becomes one with that from which he came, 
drawing strength not only by negation from 
repose, but in some way positive from the be- 
ing of his mother which is the earth. Some 
say that sleep is better near against the ground 
on this account and all men know that sleep in 
wild places and without cover is the surest and 
the best. Sleep promises waking as Rest does 
a renewal of power; and the good dreams that 
come to us in sleep are a proof that in sleep we 
are still living. 

A man may deny himself any other volup- 
tuousness but not Rest. He may forego wine 
or flesh or anything of the body, and music 
or disputation, or anything of the mind, or 
love itself, or even companionship ; but not 
Rest, for if he denies himself this he wastes 
himself and is himself no longer. Rest, there- 
fore, is a necessary intermittent which we must 
have both for soul and body and is the only 
35 



ON REST 

necessity inherent to both those two so long 
as those two are bound together in the matter 
and net of this world. For food is a necessity 
to the body and virtue to the soul, but Rest to 
one and to the other. 

There is no picture of delight in which we 
envy other men so much as when, lacking Rest, 
we see them possessing it ; on which occasions 
we call out unwisely for a Perpetual Rest and 
for the tjessation of all endeavour. In the same 
way men devise a lack of Rest for a special tor- 
ment, and none can long survive it. 

Rest and innocence are good fellows, and 
Rest is easier to the innocent man. The wicked 
suffer unrest always in some sort on account of 
God's presence warning them, though this un- 
rest is stronger and much more to their good 
if men also warn them and if they live among 
such fellows in their commonwealth as will not 
permit their wickedness to be hidden or to go 
unpunished. 

Rest has no time, and in its perfection must 
lose all mark of time. So a man sleeping deeply 
36 



ON REST 

knows not how many hours have passed since he 
fell asleep until he awake again. 

There are many good accompaniments for 
Rest, slow and distant music which at last is 
stiller and then silent ; the scent of certain herbs 
and flowers and particularly of roses ; clean 
linen ; a pure clear air and the coming of night. 
To all these things prayer, an honourable pro- 
fession and a preparation of the mind are in 
general a great aid, and, in the heat of the sea- 
son, cool water refreshed with essences. A man 
also should make his toilet for Rest if he would 
have it full and thorough and prepare his body 
as his soul for a relaxation. He does well also 
in the last passage of his mind into sleep to 
commend himself to the care of God; remem- 
bering both how petty are all human vexations 
and also how weathercock they are, turning now 
a face of terror and then in a moment another 
face of laughter or of insignificance. Many trou- 
bles that seem giants at evening are but dwarfs 
at sunrise, and some most terrific prove ghosts 
which speed off with the broadening of the day. 
37 



VI 

ON DISCOVERY 

There is a great consolation lying all bottled 
and matured for those who choose to take it, 
in the modern world — and yet how few turn to it 
and drink the bracing draft t It is a consola- 
tion for dust and frequency and fatigue and 
despair — this consolation is the Discovery of 
the World. 

The world has no end to it. You can dis- 
cover one town which you had thought well 
known, or one quarter of the town, or one house 
in the quarter of the town, or one room in that 
house, or one picture in that room. The ave- 
nues of discovery open out infinite in number 
and quite a little distance from their centre 
(which is yourself and your local, tired, re- 
peated experience) these avenues diverge out- 
wards and lead to the most amazingly different 
things. 

38 



ON DISCOVERY 

You can take some place of which you have 
heard so often and in so vulgar a connota- 
tion that you could wish never to hear of 
it again, and coming there you will find it 
holding you, and you will enjoy many happy 
surprises, unveiling things you could not dream 
were there. 

How much more true is it not, then, that dis- 
covery awaits you if you will take the least little 
step off the high road, or the least little ex- 
ploration into the past of a place you visit. 

Most men inhabiting a countryside know 
nothing of its aspect even quite close to their 
homes, save as it is seen from the main roads. 
If they will but cross a couple of fields or so, 
they may come, for the first time in many years 
of habitation, upon a landscape that seems quite 
new and a sight of their own hills which makes 
them look like the hills of a strange country. 

In youth we all know this. In youth and 

early manhood we wonder what is behind some 

rise of land, or on the other side of some wood 

which bounded our horizon in childhood. Then 

39 



ON DISCOVERY 

comes a day when we manfully explore the un- 
known places and go to find what we shall find. 

As life advances we imagine that all this 
chance of discovery has been taken from us 
by our increased experience. It is an illusion. 
If we are so dull it is we that have changed 
and not the world; and what is more we can 
recover from that dulness, and there is a sim- 
ple medicine for it, which is to repeat the old 
experiment : to go out and see what we may see. 

Some will grant this true of the sudden little 
new discoveries quite close to home, but not 
of travel. Travel, they think, must always be 
to-day by some known road to some known 
place, with dust upon the mind at the setting 
out and at the coming in. It is a great error. 
You can choose some place too famous in 
Europe and even too peopled and too large, and 
yet make the most ample discoveries there. 

" Oh, but," a man will say, " most places have 
been so written of that one knows them already 
long before seeing them." 

No : one does nothing of the kind. Even 
40 



ON DISCOVERY 

the pictured and the storied places are full 
enough of newness if one will but shake off 
routine and if one will but peer. 

Speak to five men of some place which they 
have all visited, perhaps together, and find 
out what each noticed most : you will be amazed 
at the five different impressions. 

Enter by some new entry a town which 
hitherto you had always entered by one fixed 
way, and again vary your entry, and again, and 
you will see a new town every time. 

There are many, many thousand English- 
men who know the wonderful sight of Rouen 
from the railway bridge below the town, for 
that lies on the high road to Paris, and there 
are many thousand, though not so many, who 
know Rouen from Bon-Secours. There are a 
few hundred who know it from the approach by 
the great woods to the North. There are a 
dozen or so perhaps who have come in from 
the East, walking from Picardy. The great 
town lying in its cup of hills is quite different 
every way. 

41 



ON DISCOVERY 

There is a view of Naples which has been 
photographed and printed and painted until 
we are all tired of it. It is a view taken from 
the hill which makes the northern horn of the 
Bay ; there is a big pine tree in the foreground 
and Vesuvius smoking in the background, and 
I will bargain that most people who read this 
have seen that view upon a postcard, or in 
a shop window, and that a good many of them 
would rightly say that it was the most hack- 
neyed thing in Europe. 

Now some years ago I had occasion to go 
to Naples, a town I had always avoided for 
that very reason — that one heard of it until 
one was tired and that this view had become 
like last year's music-hall tunes. 

I went, not of my own choice but because 
I had to go, and when I got there I made as 
complete a discovery as ever Columbus made 
or those sailors who first rounded Africa and 
found the Indian Seas. 

Naples was utterly unlike anything I had 
imagined. Vesuvius was not a cone smoking 



ON DISCOVERY 

upon the horizon — it was a great angry pyra- 
mid toppling right above me. The town was 
not a lazy, dirty town with all the marks of 
antiquity and none of energy. It was alive with 
commerce and all the evils and all the good of 
commerce. It was angrily alive ; it was like a 
wasp nest. 

I will state the plain truth at the risk of 
being thought paradoxical. Naples recalled 
to me an American seaboard town so vividly 
that I could have thought myself upon the 
Pacijfic. I could have gone on for days digging 
into all this new experience, turning it over 
and fructifying it. My business allowed me 
not twenty-four hours, but the vision was one 
I shall never forget, and it was as completely 
new and as wholly creative, or re-creative, 
of the mind, as is that land-fall which an 
adventurous sailor makes when he finds a 
new island at dawn upon a sea not yet trav- 
elled. 

Every one, therefore, should go out to dis- 
cover, five miles from home, or five hundred. 
43 



ON DISCOVERY 

Every one should assure himself against the 
cheating tedium which books and maps create 
in us, that the world is perpetually new: and 
oddly enough it is not a matter of money. 



44 



VII 

ON INNS 

Heee am I sitting in an Inn, having gloomily 
believed not half an hour ago that Inns were 
doomed with all other good things, but now 
more hopeful and catching avenues of escape 
through the encircling decay. 

For though certainly that very subtle and 
final expression of a good nation's life, the 
Inn, is in peril, yet possibly it may survive. 

This Inn which surrounds me as I write (the 
law forbids me to tell its name) is of the noblest 
in South England, and it is in South England 
that the chief Inns of the world still stand. In 
the hall of it, as you come in, are barrels of 
cider standing upon chairs. The woman that 
keeps this Inn is real and kind. She receives 
you so that you are glad to enter the house. 
She takes pleasure in her life. What was her 
beauty her daughter now inherits, and she serves 
45 



ON INNS 

at the bar. Her son is strong and carries up 
the luggage. The whole place is a paradise, 
and as one enters that hall one stands hesitating 
whether to enjoy its full, yet remaining delight, 
or to consider the peril of death that hangs 
to-day over all good things. 

Consider, you wanderers (that is all men, 
whatsoever, for not one of you can rest), what 
an Inn is, and see if it should not rightly raise 
both great fears and great affection. 

An Inn is of the nation that made it. If 
you desire a proof that the unity of Christen- 
dom is not to be achieved save through a dozen 
varying nations, each of a hundred varying 
counties and provinces and these each of sev- 
eral countrysides — the Inns will furnish you 
with that proof. 

If any foolish man pretend in your presence 
that the brotherhood of men should make a 
decent man cosmopolitan, reprove his error by 
the example of an Inn. 

If any one is so vile as to maintain in your 
presence that one's country should not be loved 
46 



ON INNS 

and loyally defended, confound so horrid a 
fool by the very vigorous picture of an Inn. 
And if he impudently says that some damned 
Babylon or other is better than an Inn, look up 
his ancestry. 

For the truth is that Inns (may God pre- 
serve them, and of the few remaining breed, 
in spite of peril, a host of new Inns for our 
sons), Inns, Inns are the mirror and at the 
same time the flower of a people. The savour 
of men met in kindliness and in a homely way 
for years and years comes to inhabit all their 
panels (Inns are panelled) and lends incense to 
their fires. (Inns have not radiators, but 
fires.) But this good quintessence and distilla- 
tion of comradeship varies from countryside to 
countryside and more from province to province, 
and more still from race to race and from realm 
to realm; just as speech differs and music and 
all the other excellent fruits of Europe. 

Thus there is an Inn at Tout-de-suite-Tardets 
which the Basques made for themselves and 
offer to those who visit their delightful streams. 
47 



ON INNS 

A river flows under its balcony, tinkling along 
a sheer stone wall, and before it, high against 
the sunset, is a wood called Tiger Wood, cloth- 
ing a rocky peak called the Peak of Eagles. 

Now no one could have built that Inn nor 
endowed it with its admirable spirit, save the 
cleanly but incomprehensible Basques. There 
is no such Inn in the Bearnese country, nor 
any among the Gascons. 

In Falaise the Normans very slowly and by 
a mellow process of some thousand years have 
engendered an Inn. This Inn, I think, is so 
good that you will with difficulty compare it with 
any better thing. It is as quiet as a tree on 
a summer night, and cooks crayfish in an ad- 
mirable way. Yet could not these Normans 
have built that Basque Inn; and a man that 
would merge one in the other and so drown 
both is an outlaw and to be treated as such. 

But these Inns of South England (such as 

still stand!) — what can be said in proper praise 

of them which shall give their smell and colour 

and their souls.-* There is nothing like them 

48 



ON INNS 

in Europe, nor anything to set above them 
in all the world. It is within their walls and 
at their boards that one knows what South Eng- 
land once did in the world and why. If it is 
gone it is gone. All things die at last. But 
if it is gone — why, no lover of it need remain to 
drag his time out in mourning it. If South Eng- 
land is dead it is better to die upon its grave. 

Whether it dies in our time or no you may 
test by the test of its Inns. If they may not 
weather the chaos, if they fail to round the 
point that menaces our religion and our very 
food, our humour and our prime affections — 
why, then. South England has gone too. If, 
if (I hardly dare to write such a challenge), if 
the Inns hold out a little time longer — why, 
then, South England will have turned the corner 
and Europe can breathe again. Never mind 
her extravagances, her follies or her sins. Next 
time you see her from a hill, pray for South 
England. For if she dies, you die. And as a 
symptom of her malady (some would say of her 
death-throes) carefully watch her Inns. 



ON INNS 

Of the enemies of Inns, as of rich men, dull 
men, blind men, weak-stomached men and men 
false to themselves, I do not speak : but of their 
effect. Why such blighting men are nowadays 
so powerful and why God have given them a 
brief moment of pride it is not for us to 
know. It is hidden among the secret things of 
this life. But that they are powerful all men, 
lovers of Inns, that is, lovers of right living, 
know well enough and bitterly deplore. The 
effect of their power concerns us. It is like 
a wasting of our own flesh, a whitening of our 
own blood. 

Thus there is the destruction of an Inn by 
gluttony of an evil sort — though to say so 
sounds absurd, for one would imagine that glut- 
tony should be proper to Inns. And so it is, 
when it is your true gluttony of old, the glut- 
tony of our fathers made famous in English 
letters by the song which begins : 

I am not a glutton 
But I do like pie. 

But evil gluttony, which may also be called 
50 



ON INNS 

the gluttony of devils, is another matter. It 
flies to liquor as to a drug; it is ashamed of 
itself; it swallows a glass behind a screen and 
hides. There is no companionship with it. It 
is an abomination, and this abomination has 
the power to destroy a Christian Inn and to 
substitute for it, first a gin-palace, and then, 
in reaction against that, the very horrible 
house where they sell only tea and coffee and 
bubbly waters that bite and sting both in the 
mouth and in the stomach. These places are 
hotbeds of despair, and suicides have passed 
their last hours on earth consuming slops therein 
alone. 

Thus, again, a sad enemy of Inns is luxury. 
The rich will have their special habitations in 
a town so cut off from ordinary human beings 
that no Inn may be built in their neighbour- 
hood. In which connection I greatly praise 
that little colony of the rich which is settled 
on the western side of Berkeley Square, In 
Lansdowne House, and all around the eastern 
parts of Charles Street, for they have per- 
51 



ON INNS 

mitted to be established in their midst the 
" Running Footman," and this will count in 
the scale when their detestable vices are weighed 
upon the Day of Judgment, upon which day, 
you must know, vices are not put into the scale 
gently and carefully so as to give you fair 
measure, but are banged down with enormous 
force by strong and maleficent demons. 

Then, again, a very subtle enemy of Inns is 
poverty, when it is pushed to inhuman limits, 
and you will note especially in the dreadful 
great towns of the North, more than one an- 
cient house which was once honourable and 
where Mr. Pickwick might very well have stayed, 
now turned ramshackle and dilapidated and 
abandoned, slattern, draggle-tail, a blotch, until 
the yet beastlier reformers come and pull It 
down to make an open space wherein the stunted 
children may play. 

Thus, again, you will have the pulling down 
of an Inn and the setting up of an Hotel built 
of iron and mud, or ferro-concrete. This is 
murder. 

5S 



ON INNS 

Let me not be misunderstood. Many an 
honest Inn calls itself an hotel. I have no 
quarrel with that, nor has any traveller I think. 
It is a title. Some few blighted and accursed 
hotels call themselves " Inns " — a foul snobbism, 
a nasty trick of words pretending to create 
realities. 

No, it is when the thing is really done, not 
when the name is changed that murder calls 
out to God for vengeance. 

I knew an Inn in South England, when I 
was a boy, that stood on the fringe of a larch 
wood, upon a great high road. Here when 
the springtime came and I went off to see the 
world I used to meet with carters and with 
travelling men, also keepers and men who bred 
horses and sold them, and sometimes with sailors 
padding the hoof between port and port. 
These men would tell me a thousanc^ things. 
The larch trees were pleasant in their new 
colour; the woods alive with birds and the 
great high road was, in those days, deserted: 
for high bicycles were very rare, low bicycles 



ON INNS 

were not invented, the rich went by train in 
those days ; only carts and caravans and men 
with horses used the leisurely surface of the 
way. 

Now that good Inn has gone. I was in it 
some five years ago, marvelling that it had 
changed so little, though motor things and 
money-changers went howling by in a stream 
and though there were now no poachers or 
gipsies or forestmen to speak to, when a too 
smart young man came in with two assistants 
and they began measuring, calculating, two- 
foot-ruling and jotting. This was the plot. 
Next came the deed. For in another year, 
when the Spring burst and I passed by, what 
should I see in the place of my Inn, my Inn 
of youth, my Inn of memories, my Inn of trees, 
but a damnable stack of iron with men fitting 
a thin shell of bricks to it like a skin. Next 
year the monster was alive and made. The 
old name (call it the Jolly) was flaunting on a 
vulgar signboard swing in cast-iron tracing to 
imitate forged work. The shell of bricks was 
64 



ON INNS 

cast with sham white as for half -timber work. 
The sham-white was patterned with sham tim- 
bers of baltic deal, stained dark, with pins of 
wood stuck in: like Cheshire, not like home. 
Wrong lattice insulted the windows — and in- 
side there were three bars. At the door stood 
an Evil Spirit, and within every room upstairs 
and down other devils, his servants, resided. 

It is no light thing that such things should 
be done and that we cannot prevent them. 

From the towns all Inns have been driven: 
from the villages most. No conscious efforts, 
no Bond Street nastiness of false conservation, 
will save the beloved roofs. Change your 
hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will 
deserve to have lost them. But when you have 
lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for 
you will have lost the last of England. 



55 



VIII 

ON ROWS 

The Hon. Member: Mr. Speaker, Mr. 
Speaker! Is the Hon. Member in order in 
calling me an insolent swine? 

{See Hansard passim) 

A DISTINGUISHED literary man has composed 
and perhaps will shortly publish a valuable poem 
the refrain of which is " I like the sound of 
broken glass." 

This concrete instance admirably Illustrates 
one of the most profound of human appetites : 
indeed, an appetite which, to the male half of 
humanity, is more than an appetite and is, 
rather, a necessity: the appetite for rows. 

It has been remarked by authorities so dis- 
tant and distinct, yet each so commanding, as 
Aristotle and Confucius, that words lose their 
meanings in the decline of a State. 
56 



ON ROWS 

Absolutely purposeless phrases go the rounds, 
are mechanically repeated; sometimes there is 
an attempt by the less lively citizens to act 
upon such phrases when Society is diseased! 
And so to-day you have the suburban fool who 
denounces the row. Sometimes he calls it un- 
gentlemanly — that is, unsuitable to the wealthy 
male. If he says that he simply cannot know 
what he is talking about. 

If there is one class in the community which 
has made more rows than another it is the 
young male of the wealthier classes, from Al- 
cibiades to my Lord Tit-up. When men are 
well fed, good-natured, fairly innocent (as are 
our youth) then rows are their meat and drink. 
Nay, the younger males of the gentry have 
such a craving and necessity for a row that 
they may be observed at the universities of this 
country making rows continually without any 
sort of object or goal attached to such rows. 

Sometimes he does not call it ungentlemanly, 
but points out that a row is of no effect, by 
wliich he means that there is no money in it. 
57 



ON ROWS 

That is true, neither is there money in drinking, 
or breathing, or sleeping, but they are all very 
necessary things. Sometimes the row is de- 
nounced by the suburban gentleman as unchris- 
tian ; but that is because he knows nothing about 
human history or the Faith, and plasters the 
phrase down as a label without consideration. 
The whole history of Christendom is one great 
row. From time to time the Christians would 
leap up and swarm like bees, making the most 
hideous noise and pouring out by millions to 
whang in their Christianity for as long as it 
could be borne upon the vile persons of the in- 
fidel. More commonly the Christians would 
vent their happy rage one against the other. 

The row is better fun when it is played ac- 
cording to rule : it sounds paradoxical, and your 
superficial man might conceive that the essence 
of a row was anarchy. If he did he would be 
quite wrong; a row being a male thing at once 
demands all sorts of rules and complications. 
Otherwise It would be no fun. Take, for In- 
stance, the oldest and most solid of our national 
58 



ON ROWS 

rows — the House of Commons row. Everybody 
knows how it is done and everybody surely 
knows that very special rules are observed. For 
instance, there is the word " traitor." That is 
in order. It was decided long ago, when Mr. 
Joseph Chamberlain, of Birmingham, called Mr. 
Dillon a traitor. But I have heard with my 
own ears the word " party-hack " ruled out. 
It is not allowed. 

By a very interesting decision of the Chair, 
pointing is ruled out also. If a member of the 
House suddenly thrusts out his arm with a long 
forefinger at the end of it and directs this in- 
strument towards some other member, the Chair 
has decided the gesture to be out of order. It 
is, as another member of the Chamberlain fam- 
ily has said, " No class." Throwing things is 
absolutely barred. Nor may you now imitate 
the noise of animals in the chamber itself. This 
last is a recent decision, or rather it is an ex- 
ample of an old practice falling into desuetude. 
The last time a characteristic animal cry was 
heard in the House of Commons was when a 
59 



ON ROWS 

very distinguished lawyer, later Lord Chief 
Justice of England, gave an excellent render- 
ing of a cock-crow behind the Speaker's chair 
during a difference of opinion upon the matter 
of Home Rule — but this was more than twenty 
years ago. 

It is a curious thing that Englishmen no 
longer sing during their rows. The fine song 
about the House of Lords which had a curse 
in it and was sung some months ago by two 
drunken men in Pall Mall to the lasting pleasure 
of the clubs, would come in very well at this 
juncture; or that other old political song now 
forgotten, the chorus of which is (if my memory 
serves me), " Bow wow wow 1 " 

No one has seized the appetite for a row 
more fully than the ladies who demand the 
suffrage. The " disgraceful scenes " and " un- 
womanly conduct " which we have all heard 
officially denounced, were certainly odd, pro- 
ceeding as they did from great groups of 
middle-class women as unsuited to exercises of 
this sort as a cow would be to following hounds, 
60 



ON ROWS 

but there is no doubt that the men enjoyed it 
hugely. It had all the fun of a good football 
scrimmage about it, except when they scratched. 
And to their honour be it said they did not stab 
with those murderous long pins about which the 
Americans make so many jokes. 

Before leaving this fascinating subject of 
rows, we will draw up for the warning of the 
reader a list of those to whom rows are ab- 
horrent. Luckily they are few. Money-lend- 
ers dislike rows ; political wire-pullers dislike 
rows ; very tired men recovering from fevers 
must be put in the same category, and, finally, 
oddly enough, newspaper proprietors. 

Why on earth this last little band — there are 
not a couple of dozen of them that count in 
the country — should have such a feature in com- 
mon. Heaven only knows, but they most un- 
doubtedly have; and they compel their unfor- 
tunate employees to write on the subject of 
rows most ama2;ing and incomprehensible non- 
sense. There is no accounting for tastes ! 



61 



IX 

THE PLEASANT PLACE 

A GENTLEMAN of my acquaintance came to me 
the other day for sympathy. . . . But first I 
must describe him : — 

He is a man of careful, not neat, dress : I 
would call it sober rather than neat. He is 
always clean-shaven and his scanty hair is kept 
short-cut. He is occupied in letters ; he is, to 
put it bluntly, a litteratoor; none the less he is 
possessed of scholarship and is a minor author- 
ity upon English pottery. 

He is a very good writer of verse ; he is not 
exactly a poet, but still, his verse is remark- 
able. Two of his pieces have been publicly 
praised by political peers and at least half a 
dozen of them have been praised in private 
by the ladies of that world. He is a man 
fifty-four years of age, and, if I may say so 
without betraying him, a little disappointed. 
62 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

He came to me, I say, for sympathy. I was 
sitting in my study watching the pouring rain 
falhng upon the already soaked and drenched 
and drowned clay lands of my county. The 
leafless trees (which are in our part of a low but 
thick sort) were standing against a dead grey 
sky with a sort of ghost of movement in it, when 
he came in, opened his umbrella carefully so that 
it might not drip, and left it in the stone-floored 
passage — which is, to be accurate, six hundred 
years old — kicked oif his galoshes and begged 
my hospitality ; also (let me say it for the third 
time) my sympathy. 

He said he had suffered greatly and that he 
desired to tell me the whole tale. I was very 
willing, and his tale was this : 

It seems that my friend (according to his 
account) found himself recently in a country 
of a very delightful character. 

This country lay up and heavenly upon a 

sort of table-land. One went up a road which 

led continually higher and higher through the 

ravines of the mountains, until, passing through 

63 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

a natural gate of rock, one saw before one a 
wide plain bounded upon the further side by the 
highest crests of the range. Through this up- 
land plain ran a broad and noble river whose 
reaches he could see in glimpses for miles, and 
upon the further bank of it in a direction op- 
posite that which the gate of rock regarded, was 
a very delightful city. 

The walls of this city were old in their tex- 
ture, venerable and majestic in their lines. With- 
in their circumference could be discerned sacred 
buildings of a similar antiquity, but also modern 
and convenient houses of a kind which my friend 
had not come across before, but which were evi- 
dently suited to the genial, sunlit climate, as 
also to the habits of leisured men. Their roofs 
were flat, covered in places by awnings, in other 
places by tiled verandas, and these roofs were 
often disposed in the form of little gardens. 

Trees were numerous in the city and showed 
their tops above the lower buildings, while the 
lines of their foliage indicated the direction of 
the streets. 

64 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

Mj friend was passing down the road which 
led to this plain — and as it descended it took 
on an ampler and more majestic character — 
when he came upon a traveller who appeared 
to be walking in the direction of the town. 

This traveller asked him courteously in the 
English tongue whether he were bound for the 
city. My friend was constrained to reply that 
he could not pretend to any definite plan, but 
certainly the prospect all round him was so 
pleasant and the aspect of the town so in- 
viting, that he would rather visit the capital 
of this delightful land at once than linger in 
its outskirts. 

" Come with me, then," said the Traveller, 
" and if I may make so bold upon so short 
an acquaintance, accept my hospitality. I have 
a good house upon the wall of the town and my 
rank among the citizens of it is that of a 
merchant ; — I am glad to say a prosperous one." 

He spoke without affectation and with so 
much kindness, that my friend was ravished to 
discover such a companion, and they proceeded 
65 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

in leisurely company over the few miles that 
separated them from their goal. 

The road was now paved in every part with 
small square slabs, quite smooth and apparently 
constructed of some sort of marble. Upon 
either side there ran canalised in the shining 
stone a Httle stream of perfectly clear water. 
From time to time they would pass a lovely 
shrine or statue which the country people had 
adorned with garlands. As they approached 
the city they discovered a noble bridge in the 
manner, my friend believed, of the Italian 
Renaissance, with strong elliptical arches and 
built, like all the rest of the way, of marble, 
while the balustrade upon either side of it was 
so disposed in short symmetrical columns as to 
be particularly grateful to the eye. Over this 
bridge there went to and fro a great concourse 
of people, all smiling, eager, happy and busy, 
largely acquainted, apparently, each with the 
others, nodding, exchanging news, and in a 
word forming a most blessed company. 

As they entered the city my friend's com- 
66 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

panion, who had talked of many things upon 
their way and had seemed to unite the most 
perfect courtesy and modesty with the widest 
knowledge, asked him whether there was any 
food or drink to which he was particularly at- 
tached. 

" For," said he, " I make a point whenever 
I entertain a guest — and that," he put in with a 
laugh, " is, I am glad to say, a thing that hap- 
pens frequently — I make a point, I say, of ask- 
ing him what he really prefers. It makes such 
a difference ! " 

My friend began his reply with those con- 
ventional phrases to which we are all accus- 
tomed, " That he would be only too happy to 
take whatever was set before him," " That the 
prospect of his hospitality was a sufficient guar- 
antee of his satisfaction," and so forth: but 
his host would take no denial. 

"No, no!" said he. "Do please say just 

what you prefer! It is so easy to arrange — ■ 

if you only knew ! . . . Come, I know the place 

better than you," he added, smiling again ; " you 

67 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

have no conception of its resources. Pray tell 
me quite simply before we leave this street " — 
for they were now in a street of sumptuous and 
well-appointed shops — " exactly what shall be 
commissioned." 

Moved by I know not what freedom of ex- 
pression, and expansive in a degree which he 
had never yet known, my friend smiled back 
and said : " Well, to tell you the truth, some 
such meal as this would appeal to me: First 
two dozen green-bearded oysters of the Ar- 
cachon kind, opened upon the deep shell with all 
their juices preserved, and each exquisitely 
cleaned. These set upon pounded ice and 
served in that sort of dish which is contrived for 
each oyster to repose in its own little recess with 
a sort of side arrangement for the reception of 
the empty shells." 

His host nodded gravely, as one who takes 
in all that is said to him. 

" Next," said my friend, in an enthusiastic 
manner, " real and good Russian caviar, cold 
but not frozen, and so touched with lemon — 
68 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

only just so touched — as to be perfect. With 
this I think a little of the wine called Barsac 
should be drunk, and that cooled to about thirty- 
eight degrees — (Fahrenheit). After this a 
True Bouillon, and by a True Bouillon," said 
my friend with earnestness, " I mean a Bouillon 
that has long simmered in the pot and has been 
properly skimmed, and has been seasoned not 
only with the customary herbs but also with a 
suspicion of carrot and of onion, and a mere 
breath of tarragon." 

" Right ! " said his host. " Right ! " nodding 
with real appreciation. 

" And next," said my friend, halting in the 
street to continue his list, " I think there should 
be eggs." 

" Right," said his host once more approv- 
ingly ; " and shall we say " 

" No," interrupted my friend eagerly, " let 
me speak. Eggs sur-le-plat, frizzled to the 
exact degree." 

" Just what I was about to suggest," an- 
swered his delighted entertainer, " and black 
69 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

pepper, I hope, ground large upon them in 
fresh granules from a proper wooden mill." 

" Yes ! Yes ! " said my friend, now lyric, 
" and with sea salt in large crystals." 

On saying which both of them fell into a sort 
of ecstasy which my friend broke by adding : 

" Something quite light to follow . . . 
preferably a sugar-cured Ham braised in white 
wine. Then, I think, spinach, not with the ham 
but after it ; and that spinach cooked perfectly 
dry. We will conclude with some of the cheese 
called Brie. And for wine during all these lat- 
ter courses we will drink the wine of Chinon : 
Chinon Grille. What they call," he added slyly, 
" the Fausse maigre; for it is a wine thin at 
sight but full in the drinking of it." 

" Good ! Excellent ! " said his host, clapping 
his hands together once with a gesture of final- 
ity. " And then after the lot you shall have 
coffee." 

" Yes, coffee roasted during the meal and 
ground immediately before its concoction. And 
for liqueur . . ." 

70 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

My friend was suddenly taken with a little 
doubt. " I dare not ask," said he, " for the 
liqueur called Aquebus? Once only did I taste 
it. A monk gave it me on Christmas Eve four 
years ago and I think it is not known ! " 

" Oh, ask for it by all means ! " said his 
host. " Why, we know it and love it in this 
place as though it were a member of the 
family ! " 

My friend could hardly believe his ears on 
hearing such things, and said nothing of cigars. 
But to his astonishment his host, putting his 
left hand on my friend's shoulder, looked him 
full in the face and said : 

" And now shall / tell you about ci- 



gars 



? » 



" I confess they were in my mind," said my 
friend. 

" Why then," said his host with an expression 
of profound happiness, " there is a cigar in 
this town which is full of flavour, black in col- 
our, which does not bite the tongue, and which 
none the less satisfies whatever tobacco does 
71 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

satisfy in man. When you smoke it you really 
dream." 

" Why," said my friend humbly, " very well 
then, let us mention these cigars as the comple- 
tion of our Mttle feast." 

" Little feast, indeed ! " said his host, " why 
it is but a most humble meal. Anyhow, I am 
glad to have had from you a proper schedule of 
your pleasures of the table. In time to come 
when we know each other better, we will arrange 
other large and really satisfactory meals ; but 
this will do very well for our initiatory lunch as 
it were." And he laughed merrily. 

" But have I not given you great trouble ? " 
said my friend. 

" How little you will easily perceive," said 
his companion, " for in this town we have but 
to order and all is at once promptly and intel- 
ligently done." With that he turned into a 
small office where a commissary at once took 
down his order. " And now," said he emerging, 
" let us be home." 

They went together down the turnings of a 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

couple of broad streets lined with great private 
palaces and public temples until they came to a 
garden which had no boundaries to it but which 
was open, and apparently the property of the 
city. But the people who wandered here were 
at once so few, so discreet and so courteous, my 
friend could not discover whether they were (as 
their salutes seemed to indicate) the dependents 
of his host, or merely acquaintances who recog- 
nized him upon their way. 

This garden, as they proceeded, became more 
private and more domestic ; it led by narrowing 
paths through high, diversified trees, until, be- 
yond the screen of a great beech hedge, he saw 
the house . . . and it was all that a house 
should be ! 

Its clear, well set stone walls were in such 
perfect harmony with the climate and with the 
sky, its roof garden from which a child was 
greeting them upon their approach, so unex- 
pected and so suitable, its arched open gallery 
was of so august a sort, and yet the domestic 
ornaments of its colonnade so familiar, that 
73 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

nothing could be conceived more appropriate 
for the residence of man. 

The mere passage into this Home out of the 
warm morning daylight into the inner domestic 
cool, was a benediction, and in the courtyard 
which they thus entered a lazy fountain leaped 
and babbled to itself in a manner that filled the 
heart with ease. 

" I do not know," said his host in a gentle 
whisper as they crossed the courtyard, " whether 
it is your custom to bathe before the morn- 
ing meal or in the middle of the after- 
noon ? " 

" Why, sir," said my friend, " if I may tell 
the whole truth, I have no custom in the mat- 
ter; but perhaps the middle of the afternoon 
would suit me best." 

" By all means," said his host in a satisfied 
tone. " And I think you have chosen wisely, 
for the meal you have ordered will very shortly 
be prepared. But, for your refreshment at 
least, one of my friends shall put you in order, 
cool your hands and forehead, see to your face 
74 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

and hair, put comfortable sandals upon your 
feet and give you a change of raiment." 

All of this was done. My friend's host did 
well to call the servant who attended upon his 
guest a " friend," for there was in this man's 
manner no trace of servility or of dependence, 
and yet an eager willingness for service coupled 
with a perfect reticence which was admirable to 
behold and feel. 

When my friend had been thus refreshed 
he was conducted to a most exceptional little 
room. Four pictures were set in the walls of it, 
mosaics, they seemed — but he did not examine 
their medium closely. The room itself in its 
perfect lightness and harmony, with its view 
out through a large round arch upon the coun- 
tryside beyond the walls (the old turrets of 
which made a framework for the view), exactly 
prepared him for the meal that was prepared. 

While the oysters (delightful things!) were 

entering upon their tray and were being put 

upon the table, the host, taking my friend 

aside with an exquisite gesture of courteous 

75 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

privacy, led him through the window-arch on 
to a balcony without, and said, as they gazed 
upon the wall and the plain and the mouuntains 
beyond (and what a sight they were !) : 

" There is one thing, my dear sir, that I 
should like to say to you before you eat . . . 
it is rather a delicate matter. . . . You will 
not mind my being perfectly frank? " 

" Speak on, speak on," said my friend, who 
by this time would have confided any interests 
whatsoever into the hands of such a host. 

" Well," said that host, continuing a little 
carefully, " it is this : as you can see we are 
very careful in this city to make men as happy 
as may be. We are happy ourselves, and we 
love to confer happiness upon others, strangers 
and travellers who honour us with their pres- 
ence. But we find — I am very sorry to say we 
find . . . that is, we find from time to time that 
their complete happiness, no matter with what 
we may provide them, is dashed by certain forms 
of anxiety, the chief of which is anxiety with 
regard to their future receipts of money." 
76 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

My friend started. 

" Nay," said his host hastily, *' do not mis- 
understand me. I do not mean that preoccupa- 
tions of business are alone so alarming. What 
I mean is that sometimes, yes, and I may say 
often (horrible as it seems to us!), our guests 
are in an active preoccupation about the petty 
business of finance. Some few have debts, it 
seems, in the wretched society from which they 
come, and of wliich, frankly, I know nothing. 
Others, though not indebted, feel insecure about 
the future. Others though wealthy are op- 
pressed by their responsibilities. Now," he con- 
tinued firmly, " I must tell you once and for all 
that we have a custom here upon which we take 
no denial: no denial whatsoever. Every man 
who enters this city, who honours us by enter- 
ing this city, is made free of that sort of non- 
sense, thank God ! " And as he said this, my 
friend's host breathed a great sigh of relief. 
" It would be intolerable to us to think," he 
continued, " that our welcome and dear com- 
panions were suffering from such a tawdry thing 
77 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

as money-worry in our presence. So the matter 
is plainly this: whether you like it or whether 
you do not, the sum of £10,000 is already set 
down to your credit in the public bank of the 
city ; whether you use it or not is your business ; 
if you do not it is our custom to melt down an 
equivalent sum of gold and to cast it into the 
depths of the river, for we have of this metal an 
unfailing supply, and I confess we do not find 
it easy to understand the exaggerated value 
which other men place upon it." 

" I do not know that I shall have occasion 
to use so magnificent a custom," said my friend 
with an extraordinary relief in his heart, " but 
I certainly thank you very kindly for its inten- 
tion, and I shall not hesitate to use any sum that 
may be necessary for my continuing the great 
happiness which this city appears to afford." 

*' You have spoken well," said his host, seizing 
both his hands, " and your frankness compels 
me to another confession : We have at our dis- 
posal a means of discovering exactly how any 
one of our guests may stand : the responsibilities 
78 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

of the rich, the indebtedness of the embarrassed, 
the anxiety of those whose future may be pre- 
carious. May I tell you without discourtesy, 
that your own case is known to me and to two 
trustees, who are public officials — absolutely re- 
liable — and whom, for that matter, you will not 
meet." 

My friend must have looked incredulous, 
but his host continued firmly : " It is so, we 
have settled your whole matter, I am glad to 
say, on terms that settle all your liabilities and 
leave a further £50,000 to your credit in the 
public bank. But the size of the sum is in this 
city really of no importance. You may de- 
mand whatever you will, and enjoy, I hope, a 
complete security during your habitation here. 
And that habitation, both the Town Council 
and the National Government, beg you, through 
me, to extend to the whole of your life." 



** Imagine," said my friend, " how I felt. 
. . The oysters were now upon the table, and 
79 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

before them, ready for consumption, the caviar. 
The Barsac in its original bottle, cooled (need I 
say !) to exactly thirty-eight degrees, stood 
ready . . ," 

At this point he stopped and gazed into the 
fire. 

" But, my dear fellow," said I, " if you are 
coming to me for sympathy and simply suc- 
ceed in making me hungry and cross . . ." 

" No," said my friend with a sob, " you don't 
understand ! " And he continued to gaze at the 
fire. 

" Well, go on," said I angrily. 

" There isn't any ow," he said ; " I woke ! " 

We both looked into the fire together for 
perhaps three minutes before I spoke and 
said: 

" Will you have some wine? " 

" No thank you," he answered sadly, " not 
that wine." Then he got up uneasily and 
moved for his umbrella and his galoshes, and 
the passage and the door. I thought he mut- 
tered, " You might have helped me." 
80 



THE PLEASANT PLACE 

" How could I help you ? " I said savagely. 

" Well," he sighed, " I thought you could 
... it was a bitter disappointment. Good 
night ! " And he went out again into the rain 
and over the clay. 



81 



X 

ON OMENS 

Only the other day there was printed in a news- 
paper (what a lot of things they print in news- 
papers!) five lines which read thus: 

" Calcutta, Thursday. 
" An hour before the Viceroy left Cal- 
cutta on Wednesday for the last time light- 
ning struck the flag over Government House, 
tearing it to shreds. This is considered to be 
an omen by the natives." 

The Devil they did! A superstitious chap, 
your native, and we have outgrown such things. 
But it is really astonishing when you come to 
think of it how absurdly credulous the human 
race has been for thousands of years about 
omens, and still is — everywhere except here. 
And by the way, what a curious thing it is that 
82 



ON OMENS 

only in one country, and only in one little tiny 
circle of it should this terrible vice have been 
eradicated from the human mind ! If one were 
capable of paradox one would say that the 
blessing conferred upon us few enlightened peo- 
ple in England was providential ; but that would 
be worse superstition than the other. There 
seems to be a tangle somewhere. Anyhow, there 
it is : people have gone on by the million and 
for centuries and centuries believing in omens. 
It is an illusion. It is due to a frame of mind. 
That which the enlightened person easily dis- 
covers to be a coincidence, the Native, that is, 
the person living in a place, thinks to be in some 
way due to a Superior Power. It is a way Na- 
tives have. Nothing warps the mind like be- 
ing a Native. 

The Reform Bill passed in 1832 and de- 
stroyed not only the Pot-Wallopers, but also 
the ancient Constitution of the country. From 
that time onwards we have been free. When 
the thing was thoroughly settled (and the 
old Poor Law was being got rid of into the 
83 



ON OMENS 

bargain), the old House of Lords, and the old 
House of Commons, they caught fire, " and they 
did get burnt down to the ground." Those are 
the very words of an old man who saw it happen 
and who told me about it. The misfortune 
was due to the old tallies of the Exchequer 
catching fire, and this silly old man, who saw 
it happen (he was a child of six at the time), 
has always thought it was an Omen. It has 
been explained to him, not only by good, kind 
ladies who go and visit him and see that he gets 
no money or beer, but also from the Pulpit of 
St. Margaret's Church, Westminster (where he 
regularly attends Divine Service by kind per- 
mission of the Middle Class, and in the vain hope 
of cadging alms), that there is no such thing as 
Providence, and that if he lets his mind dwell on 
Omens he will end by believing in God. But 
the old man is much too old to receive a new 
idea, so he goes on believing that the burning 
of old St. Stephen's was an Omen. 

Not so the commercial traveller, who told 
me in an hotel the other day the story of the 
84 



ON OMENS 

market-woman of Devizes, to exemplify the 
gross superstitions of our fathers. 

It seems that the market-woman, some- 
time when George III was King, had taken 
change of a sovereign on market-day, from a 
purchaser, when there were no witnesses, and 
then, in the presence of witnesses, demanded 
the change again. The man most solemnly af- 
firmed that he had paid her, to which she re- 
plied : " If I have taken your money may God 
strike me dead." The moment these words were 
out of the market-woman's hps, an enormous 
great jagged, forked, fiery dart of lightning, 
three miles long, leapt out of a distant cloud, 
and shrivelled her up. " Whereupon," ended 
the commercial traveller, " the people of Devizes 
in those days were so superstitious that they 
thought it was a judgment, they did ! And they 
put up a plate in commemoration. Such fool- 
ishness ! " It is sad to think of the people of 
Devizes and their darkness of understanding 
when George III was King. But, upon the 
other hand, it is a joy to think of the fresh, 
85 



ON OMENS 

clear minds of the people of Devizes to-day. 
For though, every Sunday morning, about half 
an hour after Church time, every single man 
and woman who had shirked Church, Chapel, 
Mosque or Synagogue, each according to his 
or her creed should fall down dead of no ap- 
parent illness, and though upon the forehead 
of each one so taken, the survivors returning 
from their services, meetings or what-not, 
should find clearly written in a vivid blue the 
Letters of Doom. None the less the people of 
Devizes would, it is to be hoped, retain their 
mental balance, and distinguish between a co- 
incidence (which is the only true explanation of 
such things) and fond imaginings of super- 
natural possibilities. 

There is an old story and a good one to 
teach us how to fight against any weakness of 
the sort, which is this. Two old gentlemen 
who had never met before were in a first-class 
railway carriage of a train that does not stop 
until it gets to Bristol. They were talking 
about ghosts. One of them was a parson, 
86 



ON OMENS 

the other was a layman. The layman said he 
did not believe in ghosts. The parson was 
very much annoyed, tried to convince him, 
and at last said, " After all, you'd have to 
believe in one if you saw one." 

*' No, I shouldn't," said the layman sturdily. 
" I should know it was an illusion." 

Then the old parson got very angry indeed, 
and said in a voice shaking with self-restraint: 

" Well, you've got to believe in ghosts now, 
for I am one ! " Whereat he immediately van- 
ished into the air. 

The old layman, finding himself well rid of 
a bad business, shook himself together, wrapped 
his rug round his knees, and began to read his 
paper, for he knew very well that it was an 
illusion. 

Of the same sturdy sense was Isaac Newton, 
when a lady came to him who had heard he 
was an astrologer, and asked him where she 
had dropped her purse, somewhere between 
Shooter's Hill and London Bridge. She would 
not believe that the Baronet (or knight, I for- 
87 



ON OMENS 

get which) could be ignorant of such things, 
and she came about fourteen times. So to be 
rid of her Newton, on the occasion of her last 
visit, put on an old flowered dressing-gown, and 
made himself a conical paper hat, and put on 
great blue goggles, and drew a circle on the 
floor, and said " Abracadabra ! " " The front 
of Greenwich Hospital, the third great window 
from the southern end. On the grass just be- 
neath it I see a short devil crouched upon a 
purse of gold." Off went the female, and sure 
enough under that window she found her purse. 
Whereat, instead of hearing the explanation 
(there was none) she thought it was an Omen. 

Remember this parable. It is enormously il- 
luminating. 



88 



XI 

THE BOOK 

This is written to dissuade all rich men from 
queering the pitch of us poor litteratoors, who 
have to write or starve. It is about a Mr. 
Foley: a Mr. Charles Foley, a banker and the 
son of a banker, who in middle life, that is at 
forty, saw no more use in coming to his office 
every day, but began to lead the life of a man 
of leisure. Next, being exceedingly rich he was 
prompted, of course, to write a book. The 
thing that prompted him to write a book was 
a thought, an idea. It took him suddenly as 
ideas will, one Saturday evening as he was walk- 
ing home from his Club. It was a fine night 
and the idea seemed to come upon him out of 
the sky. This was the idea: that men produce 
such and such art in architecture and society 
and so forth, on account of the kind of climate 
they live in. Such a thought had never come 
89 



THE BOOK 

to him before and very probably to no other 
man. It was simple like a seed — and yet, as 
he turned it over, what enormous possibilities. 

He lay awake half the night examining it. 
It spread out like a great tree and explained 
every human thing on earth; at least if to 
climate one added one or two other things, 
such as height above the sea and consequent 
rarity of the air and so forth — but perhaps all 
these could be included in climate. 

Hitherto every one had imagined that na- 
tions and civilisations had each their tempera- 
ment and tendency or genius, but those words 
were only ways of saying that one did not 
know what it was. He knew : Charles Foley did. 
He had caught the inspiration suddenly as it 
passed. He slept the few last hours of the 
night in a profound repose, and next day he was 
at it. He was writing that book. 

He was a business-man — luckily for him. He 

did not speak of the great task until it was 

done. He was in no need of money — luckily 

for him. He could afford to wait until the 

90 



THE BOOK 

last pages had satisfied him. Life had taught 
him that one could do nothing in business un- 
less one had something in one's hands. He 
would come to the publisher with something in 
his hands, to wit, with this MSS. He had no 
doubt about the title. He would call it " Man 
AND Nature." The title had come to him in 
a sort of flash after the idea. Anyhow, that 
was the title, and he felt it to be a very part of 
his being. 

He had fixed upon his publisher. He rang 
him up to make an appointment. The pub- 
lisher received him with charming courtesy. It 
was the publisher himself who received him; 
not the manager, nor the secretary, nor any one 
like that, but the real person, the one who had 
the overdraft at the Bank. 

He treated Mr. Charles Foley so well that 
Mr. Foley tasted a new joy which was the joy 
of sincere praise received. He was in the liberal 
arts now. He had come into a second world. 
His mere wealth had never given him this. When 
the publisher had heard what Mr. Charles Foley 
91 



THE BOOK 

had to say, he scratched the tip of his nose with 
his forefinger, and suggested that Mr. Foley 
should pay for the printing and the binding of 
the book, and that then the publisher should ad- 
vertise it and sell it, and give Mr. Foley so 
much. 

But Mr. Foley would have none of this. He 
was a business man and he could see through a 
brick wall as well as any one. So the publisher 
made this suggestion and that suggestion and 
talked all round about it. He was evidently 
keen to have the book. Mr. Foley could see 
that. At last the publisher made what Mr. 
Foley thought for the first time a sound busi- 
ness proposition, which was that he should pub- 
lish the book in the ordinary way and then that 
he and Mr. Foley should share and share alike. 
If there was a loss they would divide it, but if 
there was a profit they would divide that. Mr. 
Foley was glad that he came to a sensible busi- 
ness decision at last, and closed with him. The 
date of publication also was agreed upon: it 
was to be the 15th of April. " In order," said 
92 



THE BOOK 

the publisher, " that we may catch the London 
season." Mr. Charles Foley suggested August, 
but the publisher assured him that August was 
a rotten time for books. 

Only the very next day Mr. Foley entered 
upon the responsibilities which are inseparable 
from the joys of an author. He received a 
letter from the publisher, saying that it seemed 
that another book had been written under the 
title " Man and Nature," that he dared not 
publish under that title lest the publishers of 
the other volume should apply for an injunc- 
tion. 

Mr. Foley suffered acutely. He left his 
breakfast half finished; ran into town in his 
motor, as agonized in every block of the traffic 
as though he had to catch a train; was kept 
waiting half an hour in the publisher's office be- 
cause the principal had not yet arrived, and, 
when he did arrive, was persuaded that there was 
nothing to be done. The Courts wouldn't al- 
low " Man and Nature," the publisher was sure 
of that. He kept on shaking his great big silly 
93 



THE BOOK 

head until it got on Mr. Foley's nerves. But 
there was no way out of it, so Mr. Foley 
changed the title to " Art and Environment " 
— it was the publisher's secretary who sug- 
gested this new title. 

He got home to luncheon, to which he now 
remembered he had asked a friend — a man 
who played golf. Mr. Foley did not want to 
make a fool of himself, so he led up very cau- 
tiously at luncheon to his great question, which 
was this : " How does the title ' Art and En- 
vironment ' sound.'' " He had a friend, he said, 
who wanted to know. On hearing this Mr. 
Foley's golfing friend gave a loud guffaw, and 
said it sounded all right ; so did the Origin of 
Species. It would come out about the same 
time, and then he spent three or four minutes 
trying to remember who the old johnny was 
who wrote it, but Mr. Foley was already at the 
telephone in the hall. He was not happy; he 
had rung up the publisher. The publisher was 
at luncheon. Mr. Foley damned the publisher. 
Could he speak to the manager? To the sec- 
94 



THE BOOK 

retary? To one of the clerks? To the little 
dog? In his anger he was pleased to be 
facetious. He heard the manager's voice : 

" Yes, is that Mr. Foley? " 

" Yes, about that title." 

" Oh, yes, I thought you'ld ring up. It's 
impossible, you know, it's been used before ; 
and there's no doubt at all that the University 
printers would apply for an injunction." 

" Well, I can't wait," shouted Mr. Foley into 
the receiver. 

" You can't what ? " said the manager. " I 
can't hear you, you are talking too loud." 

" I can't wait," said Mr. Foley in a lower 
tone and strenuously. " Suggest something 
quick." 

The manager could be heard thinking at the 
end of the live wire. At last he said, " Oh, any- 
thing." Mr. Foley used a horrible word and 
put back the receiver. 

He went back to his golfing friend who was 
drinking some port steadily with cheese, and 
said : " Look here, that friend of mine I have 
95 



THE BOOK 

just been telephoning to says he wants another 
title." 

" What for? " said the golfing friend, his 
mouth full of cheese. 

" Oh, for his book of course," said Mr. Foley 
sharply. 

" Sorry, I thought it was politics," answered 
his friend, his mouth rather less full. Then a 
bright thought struck him. 

" What's the book about.? " 

" Well, it's about art and . . . climate, you 
know." 

" Why, then," said the friend stolidly, " why 
not call it ' Art and Climate ' ? " 

" That's a good idea," said Mr. Foley, strok- 
ing his chin. 

He hurried indecently, turned the poor golf- 
ing friend out, hurried up to town in his motor 
in order to make them call the book " Art and 
Climate." When he got there he found the 
real publisher, who hummed and hawed and 
said : " All this changing of titles will be very 
expensive, you know." Mr. Foley could not 
96 



THE BOOK 

help that, it had to be done, so the book was 
called " Art and Climate," and then it was 
printed, and seventy copies were sent out to 
the Press and it was reviewed by three papers. 
One of the papers said : 

" Mr. Charles Foley has written an in- 
teresting essay upon the effect of climate 
upon art, upon such conditions as will affect 
it whether adversely or the contrary. The 
point of view is an original one and gives 
food for thought." 

Mr. Foley thought this notice quite too short 
and imperfect. 

The second paper had a column about it, 
nearly all of which was made out of bits cut 
right out of the book, but without acknowledg- 
ment or in inverted commas. In between the 
bits cut out there were phrases like, "Are we 
however to believe that . . ." and " Some in 
this connection would decide that. . . ." But 
all the rest were bits cut out of his book. 
97 



THE BOOK 

The third review was in The Times, and in 
very small type between brackets. All it did 
was to give a list of the chapters and a sentence 
out of the preface. 

Mr. Foley sold thirty copies of his book, gave 
away seventy-four and lent two. The pub- 
lisher assured him that books like that did not 
have a large immediate sale as a novel did; 
they had a slow, steady sale. 

It was about the middle of May that the 
publisher assured him of this. In June the 
solicitors of a Professor at Yale acting for the 
learned man in this country, threatened an 
action concerning a passage in the book which 
was based entirely upon the Professor's copy- 
right work. Mr. Foley admitted his high in- 
debtedness to the Professor, and wore a troubled 
look for days. He had always thought it quite 
legitimate in the world of art to use another 
person's work if one acknowledged it. At last 
the thing was settled out of court for quite a 
small sum, £150 or £200, or something like 
that. 

98 



THE BOOK 

Then everything was quiet and the sales 
went very slowly. He only sold a half-dozen 
all the rest of the summer. 

In the autumn the publisher wrote him a 
note asking whether he might act upon Clause 
15 of the contract. Mr. Foley was a business 
man. He looked up the contract and there he 
saw these words : 

" If after due time has elapsed in the 
opinion of the publisher, a book shall not be 
warrantable at its existing price, change of 
price shall be made in it at the discretion of 
the publisher or of the author, or both, or 
each, subject to the conditions of Clause 9." 

Turning to Clause 9, Mr. Foley discovered 
the words: 

" All questions of price, advertisements, 
binding, paper, printing, etc., shall be vested 
in Messrs. Towkem Bingo and Piatt, herein- 
after called the Publishers." 
99 



THE BOOK 

He puzzled a great deal about these two 
clauses, and at last he thought, " Oh, well, they 
know more than I do about it," so he just tele- 
graphed back, " Yes." 

On the first of the New Year Mr. Foley got a 
most astonishing document. It was a printed 
sheet with a lot of lines written in red ink and 
an account. On the one side there was " By 
sales £18," then there was a long red line 
drawn down like a Z, and at the bottom, 
"£241 17s. 4id.," and in front of this the 
word " Balance," then the two were added to- 
gether and made £259 17s. 4|d. Under this 
sum there were two lines drawn. 

On the other side of the document there was 
a whole regiment of items, one treading upon 
another's heels. There was paper, and print- 
ing, and corrections, binding, warehousing, 
storage, cataloguing, advertising, travelling, 
circularizing, packing, and what I may call with 
due respect to the reader, " the devil and all." 
The whole of which added up to no less than 
the monstrous sum of £519 14s. 9d. Under this 
100 



THE BOOK 

was written in small letters in red ink, " Less 
50^ as per agreement," and then at the bottom 
that nasty figure, " £259 17s. 4|d.," and there 
was a little request in a round hand that the 
balance of £241 17s. 4^d. should be paid at Mr. 
Foley's convenience. 

Mr. Foley, white with rage, acted as a busi- 
ness man always should. He wrote a short 
note refusing to pay a penny, and demanding 
the rest of the unsold copies. He got a 
lengthier and stronger note from Messrs. 
Towkem and Thingummebob, referring to his 
letter, to Clause 9 and to Clause 15, informing 
him that the remainder of the stock had been 
sold at a penny each to a firm of papermakers 
in the North of England, and respectfully press- 
ing for immediate payment. 

Mr. Foley put the matter in the hands of his 
solicitors and they ran him up a bill for £37 
odd, but it was well worth it because they per- 
suaded him not to go into court, so in the long 
run he had to pay no more than £278 17s. 4^d., 
unless you count the postage and the travelling. 
101 



THE BOOK 

Now you know what happened to Mr. 
Foley and his book, and what will happen to 
you if you are a rich man and poach on my 
preserves. 



102 



XII 

THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

Do you mark there, down in the lowest point 
and innermost funnel of Hell Fire Pit, souls 
writhing in smoke, themselves like glowing 
smoke and tortured in the flame? You ask me 
what they are. These are the Servants of the 
Rich: the men who in their mortal life opened 
the doors of the Great Houses and drove 
the carriages and sneered at the unhappy 
guests. 

Those larger souls that bear the greatest 
doom and manifest the more dreadful suffering, 
they are the Butlers boiling in molten gold. 

" What ! " you cry, " is there then, indeed, 
as I once heard in childhood, justice for men 
and an equal balance, and a final doom for evil 
deeds .'' " There is ! Look down into the murky 
hollow and revere the awful accomplishment of 
human things. 

103 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

These are the men who would stand with 
powder on their heads like clowns, dressed in 
fantastic suits of gold and plush, with an ugly 
scorn upon their faces, and whose pleasure it 
was (while yet their time of probation lasted) 
to forget every human bond and to cast down 
the nobler things in man : treating the artist 
as dirt and the poet as a clown; and beautiful 
women, if they were governesses or poor rela- 
tions or in any way dependents, as a meet ob- 
ject for silent mockery. But now their time 
is over and they have reaped the harvest 
which they sowed. Look and take com- 
fort, all you who may have suffered at their 
hands. 

Come closer. See how each separate sort 
suffers its peculiar penalty. There go a hope- 
less shoal through the reek: their doom is an 
eternal sleeplessness and a nakedness in the 
gloom. There is nothing to comfort them, not 
even memory: and they know that for ever and 
for ever they must plunge and swirl, driven be- 
fore the blasts, now hot, now icy, of their ever- 
104 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

lasting pain. These are those men who were 
wont to come into the room of the Poor Guest 
at early morning with a steadfast and assured 
step and a look of insult. These are those who 
would take the tattered garments and hold them 
at arm's length as much as to say : " What rags 
these scribblers wear ! " and then, casting them 
over the arm with a gesture that meant : " Well, 
they must be brushed, but Heaven knows if 
they will stand it without coming to pieces ! " 
would next discover in the pockets a great 
quantity of middle-class things, and notably 
loose tobacco. 

These are they that would then take out 
with the utmost patience, private letters, money, 
pocket-books, knives, dirty crumpled stamps, 
scraps of newspapers, broken cigarettes, pawn 
tickets, keys, and much else, muttering within 
themselves so that one could almost hear it with 
their lips : " What a jumble these paupers stuff 
their shoddy with ! They do not even know that 
in the Houses of the Great it is not customary 
to fill the pockets ! They do not know that the 
105 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

Great remove at night from their pockets such 
few trinkets of diamonded gold as they may 
contain. Where were they born or bred? To 
think that I should have to serve such cattle ! 
No matter ! He has brought money with him 
I am glad to see — borrowed, no doubt — and I 
will bleed him well." 

Such thoughts one almost heard as one lay 
in the Beds of the Great despairing. Then one 
would see him turn one's socks inside out, 
which is a ritual with the horrid tribe. Then 
a great bath would be trundled in and he would 
set beside it a great can and silently pronounce 
the judgment that whatever else was forgiven 
the middle-class one thing would not be for- 
given them — the neglect of the bath, of the 
splashing about of the water and of the ade- 
quate wetting of the towel. 

All these things we have suffered, you and 
I, at their hands. But be comforted. They 
writhe in Hell with their fellows. 

That man who looked us up and down so 
insolently when the great doors were opened in 
106 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

St. James' Square and who thought one's boots 
so comic. He too, and all his like, bum sep- 
arately. So does that fellow with the wine that 
poured it out ungenerously, and clearly thought 
that we were in luck's way to get the bubbly 
stuff at all in any measure. He that conveyed 
his master's messages with a pomp that was in- 
stinct with scorn and he that drove you to the 
station, hardly deigning to reply to your timid 
sentences and knowing well your tremors and 
your abject iU-ease. Be comforted. He too 
burns. 

It is the custom in Hell when this last batch 
of scoundrels, the horsey ones, come up in 
batches to be dealt with by the authorities 
thereof, for them first to be asked in awful 
tones how many pieces of silver they have taken 
from men below the rank of a squire, or whose 
income was less than a thousand pounds a year, 
and the truth on this they are compelled by Fate 
to declare, whereupon, before their tortures be- 
gin, they receive as many stripes as they took 
florins: nor is there any defect in the arrange- 
107 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

ment of divine justice in their regard, save 
that the money is not refunded to us. 

Cooks, housemaids, poor Httle scullery-maids, 
under-gardeners, estate carpenters of all kinds, 
small stable lads, and in general all those humble 
Servants of the Rich who are debarred by their 
insolent superiors from approaching the guests 
and neither wound them with contemptuous 
looks, nor follow these up by brigandish demands 
for money, these you will not see in this Pit of 
Fire. For them is reserved a liigh place in 
Paradise, only a little lower than that supreme 
and cloudy height of bliss wherein repose the 
happy souls of all who on this earth have been 
Journalists. 

But Game-Keepers, more particularly those 
who make a distinction and will take nothing 
less than gold (nay Paper!), and Grooms of 
the Chamber, and all such, these suffer torments 
for ever and for ever. So has Immutable 
Justice decreed and thus is the offended majesty 
of man avenged. 

And what, you will ask me perhaps at last, 
108 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

what of the dear old family servants, who are 
so good, so kind, so attached to Master Arthur 
and to Lady Jane? 

Ah ! ... Of these the infernal plight is such 
that I dare not set it down 1 

There is a special secret room in Hell where 
their villainous hypocrisy and that accursed 
mixture of yielding and of false independence 
wherewith they flattered and be-fooled their 
masters ; their thefts, their bullying of beggar- 
men, have at last a full reward. Their eyes 
are no longer sly and cautious, lit with the pre- 
tence of affection, nor are they here rewarded 
with good fires and an excess of food, and 
perquisites and pensions. But they sit hearth- 
less, jibbering with cold, and they stare broken 
at the prospect of a dark Eternity. And now 
and then one or another, an aged serving-man 
or a white-haired housekeeper, will wring their 
hands and say : " Oh, that I had once, only 
once, shown in my mortal life some momentary 
gleam of honour, independence, or dignity ! Oh, 
that I had but once stood up in my freedom 
109 



THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 

and spoken to the Rich as I should! Then it 
would have been remembered for me and I 
should now have been spared this place — but 
it is too late ! " 

For there is no repentance known among the 
Servants of the Rich, nor any exception to 
their vileness; they are hated by men when 
they live, and when they die they must for all 
eternity consort with demons. 



110 



XIII 

THE JOKE 

There are two kinds of jokes, those jokes that 
are funny because they are true, and those jokes 
that would be funny anyhow. Think it out and 
you will find that that is a great truth. Now 
the joke I have here for the delectation of the 
broken-hearted is of the first sort. It is funny 
because it is true. It is about a man whom I 
really saw and really knew and touched, and 
on occasions treated ill. He was. The sun- 
light played upon his form. Perhaps he may 
still flounder under the light of the sun, and not 
yet have gone down into that kingdom whose 
kings are less happy than the poorest hind upon 
the upper fields. 

It was at College that I knew him and I 
retained my acquaintance with him — Oh, I re- 
tained it in a loving and cherishing manner — 
until he was grown to young manhood. I 
111 



THE JOKE 

would keep it still did Fate permit me so to 
do, for he was a treasure. I have never met 
anything so complete for the purposes of 
laughter, though I am told there are many 
such in the society which bred his oafish form. 

He was a noble in his own country, which 
was somewhere in the pine-forests of the Ger- 
manies, and his views of social rank were far, 
far too simple for the silent subtlety of the 
English Rich. In his poor turnip of a mind he 
ordered all men thus : 

First, reigning sovereigns and their families. 

Secondly, mediatized people. 

Third, Princes. 

Fourth, Dukes. 

Fifth, Nobles. 

Then came a little gap, and after that little 
gap The Others. 

Most of us in our College were The Others. 
But he, as I have said, was a noble in his distant 
land. 

He had not long been among the young Eng- 
lishmen when he discovered that a difficult tangle 
112 



THE JOKE 

of titles ran hither and thither among them 
like random briars through an undergrowth. 
There were Honourables, and there were Lords, 
and Heaven knows what, and there were two 
Sirs, and altogether it puzzled him. 

He couldn't understand why a man should 
be called Mr. Jinks, and his brother Lord 
Blefauscu, and then if a man could be called 
Lord Blefauscu while his father Lord Brobdig- 
nag was alive, how was it that quite a Fresher 
should be called Sir Howkey — no — he was Sir 
John Howkey: and when the Devil did one put 
in the Christian name and when didn't one, and 
why should one, and what was the order of 
precedence among all these? 

I think that last point puzzled him more 
than the rest, for in his own far distant land 
in the pine-woods, where peasants uglier than 
sin grovelled over the potato crop and called 
him " Baron," there were no such devilish con- 
traptions, but black was black and white was 
white. Here in this hypocritical England, to 
which his father had sent him as an exile, 
113 



THE JOKE 

everything was so wrapped up in deceiving 
masks ! There was the Captain of the Eleven, 
or the President of the Boat Club. By the 
time he had mastered that there might be great 
men not only without the actual title (he had 
long ago despaired of that), but without so 
much as cousinship to one, he would stumble 
upon a fellow with nothing whatsoever to dis- 
tinguish him, not even the High Jump, and yet 
" in " with the highest. It tortured him I can 
tell you ! After he had sat upon several Fourth 
Year men (he himself a Fresher), from an 
error as to their rank, after he had been duly 
thrown into the water, blackened as to his face 
with blacking, sentenced to death in a court- 
martial and duly shot with a blank cartridge 
(an unpleasant thing by the way looking down 
a barrel) ; after he had had his boots, of which 
there were seven pair, packed with earth, and in 
each one a large geranium planted; after all 
these things had happened to him in his pur- 
suit of an Anglo-German understanding, he ap- 
proached a lanky, pot-bellied youth whom he 
114 



THE JOKE 

had discovered with certitude to be the cousin 
of a Duke, and begged him secretly to befriend 
him in a certain matter, which was this : 

The Baron out of the Germanies proposed to 
give a dinner to no less than thirty people and 
he begged the pot-bellied youth in all secrecy to 
collect for him an assembly worthy of his rank 
and to give him privately not only their names 
but their actual precedence according to which 
he would arrange them at the table upon his 
right and upon his left. 

But what did the pot-bellied youth do ? Why 
he went out and finding all his friends one after 
the other he said: 

*' You know Sausage ? " 

" Yes," said they, for all the University knew 
Sausage. 

*' Well, he is going to give a dinner," said 
the pot-bellied one, who was also slow of 
speech, " and you have to come, but I'm going 
to say you are the Duke of Rochester" (or 
whatever title he might have chosen). And so 
speaking, and so giving the date and place he 
115 



THE JOKE 

would go on to the next. Then, when he had 
collected not thirty but sixty of all his friends 
and acquaintances, he sought out the noble Teu- 
ton again and told him that he could not pos- 
sibly ask only thirty men without lifelong jeal- 
ousies and hatreds, so sixty were coming, and 
the Teuton with some hesitation (for he was 
fond of money) agreed. 

Never shall I forget the day when those sixty 
were ushered solemnly into a large Reception 
Room in the Hotel, blameless youths of varying 
aspect, most of them quite sober — since it was 
but 7 o'clock — presented one by one to the 
host of the evening, each with his title and 
style. 

To those whom he recognized as equals the 
Aristocrat spoke with charming simplicity. 
Those who were somewhat his inferiors (the 
lords by courtesy and the simple baronets) he 
put immediately at their ease; and even the 
Honourables saw at a glance that he was a 
man of the world, for he said a few kind words 
to each. As for a man with no handle to his 
116 



THE JOKE 

name, there was not one of the sixty so low, 
except a Mr. Poopsibah of whom the gatherer 
of that feast whispered to the host that he could 
not but ask him because, though only a second 
cousin, he was the heir to the Marquis of Quirk 
— hence his Norman name. 

It was a bewilderment to the Baron, for he 
might have to meet the man later in life as the 
Marquis of Quirk, whereas for the moment he 
was only Mr. Poopsibah, but anyhow he was 
put at the bottom of the table — and that was 
how the trouble began. 

In my time — I am talking of the nineties — 
young men drank wine : it was before the Bishop 
of London had noted the Great Change. And 
Mr. Poopsibah and his neighbour — Lord Henry 
Job — were quite early in the Feast occupied 
in a playful contest which ended in Mr. Poop- 
sibah's losing his end seat and going to grass. 
He rose, not unruffled, with a burst collar, and 
glared a little uncertainly over the assembled 
wealth and lineage of the evening. Lord Benin 
(the son of our great General Lord Ashantee 
117 



THE JOKE 

of Benin — his real name was Mitcham, God Rest 
His Soul) addressed to the unreal Poopsibah 
an epithet then fashionable, now almost for- 
gotten, but always unprintable. Mr. Poopsi- 
bah, forgetting what nobility imposes, immedi- 
ately hurled at him an as yet half -emptied bottle 
of Champagne. 

Then it was that the bewildered Baron 
learnt for the last time — and for that matter 
for the first time — to what the Island Race 
can rise when it really lets itself go. 

I remember (I was a nephew if I remember 
right) above the din and confusion of light 
(for candles also were thrown) loud appeals as 
in a tone of command, and then as in a tone 
of supplication, both in the unmistakable ac- 
cents of the Cousins overseas, and I even re- 
member what I may call the Great Sacrilege 
of that evening when Lord Gogmagog seizing 
our host affectionately round the neck, and 
pressing the back of his head with his large 
and red left hand, attempted to grind his face 
into the tablecloth, after a fashion wholly un- 
118 



THE JOKE 

known to the haughty lords of the Teufel- 
wald. 

During the march homewards — an adven- 
ture enhghtened with a sharp skirmish and two 
losses at the hands of the police — I know not 
what passed through the mind of the youth 
who had hitherto kept so careful a distinction 
between blood and blood : whether like Hannibal 
he swore eternal hatred to the English, or 
whether in his patient German mind he noted 
it all down as a piece of historical evidence to 
be used in his diplomatic career, we shall not be 
told. I think in the main he was simply be- 
wildered: bewildered to madness. 

Of the many other things we made him do 
before Eights Week I have no space to tell: 
How he asked us what was the fashionable sport 
and how we told him Polo and made him 
buy a Polo pony sixteen hands high, with huge 
great bones and a broken nose, explaining to 
him that it was stamina and not appearance 
that the bluff Englishman loved in a horse. 
How we made him wear his arms embroidered 
119 



THE JOKE 

upon his handkerchief (producing several for 
a pattern and taking the thing as a common- 
place by sly allusion for many preparatory 
days). How we told him that it was the cus- 
tom to call every Sunday afternon for half 
an hour upon the wife of every married Don 
of one's College: How we challenged him to 
the Great College feat of throwing himself into 
the river at midnight : How finally we persuaded 
him that the ancient custom of the University 
demanded the presentation to one's Tutor at 
the end of term of an elaborate thesis one hun- 
dred pages long upon some subject of The- 
ology: How he was carefully warned that sur- 
prise was the essence of this charming tradition 
and not a word of it must be breathed to the 
august recipient of the favour: How he sucked 
in the knowledge that the more curious and 
strange the matter the higher would be his place 
in the schools, and how the poor fool elaborately 
wasted what God gives such men for brains in 
the construction of a damning refutation 
against the Monophysites : How his tutor, a 
120 



THE JOKE 

humble little nervous fool, thought he was hav- 
ing his leg pulled — all these things I have no 
space to tell you now. 

But he was rich ! Doubtless by the custom of 
his country he is now in some great position 
plotting the ruin of Britannia and certainly she 
deserves it in his case. He was most unmerci- 
fully ragged. 



121 



XIV 

THE SPY 

One day as I was walking along the beach at 
Southsea, I saw a little man sitting upon a 
camp-stool and very carefully drawing the Old 
Round Stone Fort which stands in the middle of 
the shallow water, one of the four that so stand, 
and which looks from Southsea as though it 
were about half-way across to the Island. 

I said to him : " Sir, why are you drawing 
that old Fort? " 

He answered : " I am a German Spy, and the 
reason I draw that Fort is to provide informa- 
tion for my Government which may be useful to 
it in case of war with this country." 

When the gentleman sitting upon the camp- 
stool, who was drawing the Old Round Stone 
Fort in the middle of the water, talked like this 
he annoyed me very much. 

" You merely waste your time," said I. 
122 



THE SPY 

" These Forts were put up nearly sixty years 
ago, and they are quite useless." 

" I know nothing about that," said the little 
man — he had hair like hemp and prominent 
weak blue eyes of a glazed sort, and altogether 
he struck me as a fool of no insignificant calibre 
— " I know nothing about that. I obey orders. 
I was told to draw this Fort, and that I am 
now doing." 

*' You do not draw well," said I, " but that 
is neither here nor there. I mean that what 
you draw is not beautiful. What I really want 
to know is why in thunder you were told to draw 
that round stone barrel, for which no one in 
Europe would give a five-pound note." 

" I have nothing to do with all that," said 
the little man again, still industriously draw- 
ing. " I was told to draw that Fort, and that 
Fort I draw." And he went on drawing the 
Old Round Stone Fort. 

" Can you not tell me for whom you are 
drawing it ? " said I at last. 

" Yes," said he, " with great pleasure. I am 
123 



THE SPY 

drawing it for his King-like and Kaiser-like 
Majesty By the Grace of God and the Authority 
of the Holy See, Wilham, King of Prussia, 
Margrave of Brandenburg, Duke of Romshall, 
Count Hohenzollem and of the Great German 
Empire, Emperor." 

With that he went on drawing the Old Round 
Stone Fort. 

" I do assure you most solemnly," said I 
again, " that you can be of no use whatever to 
your master in this matter. There are no guns 
upon that ridiculous thing; it has even been 
turned into a hotel." 

But the little man paid no attention to what 
I said. He went on obeying orders. He had 
often heard that this was the strength of his 
race. 

" How could there conceivably be any guns 
on it?" said I imploringly. "Do think what 
you are at ! Do look at the range between 
you and Ryde ! Do consider what modern gun- 
nery is ! Do wake up, do ! " 

But the little man with hair like hemp said 
124 



THE SPY 

again : " I know nothing about all that. I am 
a lieutenant in the High Spy Corps, and I have 
been told to draw this Fort and I must draw it." 
And he went on drawing the Old Round Stone 
Fort. 

Then gloom settled upon my spirit, for I 
thought that civilization was in peril if men 
such as he really existed and really went on 
in this fashion. 

However, I went back into Southsea, into 
the town, and there I bought a chart. Then 
I struck off ranges upon the chart and marked 
them in pencil, and I also marked the Fairway 
through Spithead into Portsmouth Harbour. 
Then I came back to the little man, and I 
said : " Do look at this ! " 

He looked at it very patiently and carefully, 
but at the end of so looking at it he said: 
" I do not understand these things. I do not 
belong to the High Map-making Corps ; I be- 
long to the Spy Corps, and I have orders to 
draw this Fort." And he went on drawing the 
Old Round Stone Fort. 

125 



THE SPY 

Then, seeing I could not persuade him, I 
went into a neighbouring church which is dedi- 
cated to the Patron of Spies, to wit, St. Judas, 
and I prayed for this man. I prayed thus : 

" Oh, St. Judas ! Soften the flinty heart of 
this Spy, and turn him, by your powerful inter- 
cession, from his present perfectly useless oc- 
cupation of drawing the Old Round Stone Fort 
to something a little more worthy of his distin- 
guished mission and the gallant profession he 
adorns." 

When I had prayed thus diligently for half 
an hour something within me told me that it 
was useless, and when I got back to the sea- 
shore I found out what the trouble was. Prayers 
went off my little man like water off a cabbage- 
leaf. My little man with hair like hemp was a 
No-Goddite, for he so explained to me in a con- 
versation we had upon the Four Last Things. 

" I have done my drawing," he said at the 
end of this conversation (and he said it in a 
tone of great satisfaction). " Now I shall go 
back to Germany." 

126 



THE SPY 

" No," said I, " you shall do nothing of the 
kind. I will have you tried first in a court, and 
you shall be sent to prison for being a Spy." 

" Very well," said he, and he came with me 
to the court. 

The Magistrate tried him, and did what they 
call in the newspapers " looking very grave," 
that is, he looked silly and worried. At last he 
determined not to put the Spy in prison because 
there was not sufficient proof that he was a Spy. 

" Although," he added, " I have little doubt 
but that you have been prying into the most 
important military secrets of the country." 

After that I took the Spy out of court again 
and gave him some dinner, and that night he 
went back home to Germany with his drawing 
of the Old Round Stone Fort. 

It is certainly an extraordinary way of do- 
ing business, but that is their look-out. The'y 
think they are efficient, and we think they are 
efficient, and when two people of opposite inter- 
ests are agreed on such a matter it is not for 
third parties to complain. 
127 



XV 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

One of my amusements, a mournful one I admit, 
upon these fine spring days, is to watch in the 
streets of London the young people, and to 
wonder if they are what I was at their age. 

There is an element in human life which the 
philosophers have neglected, and which I am at 
a loss to entitle, for I think no name has been 
coined for it. But I am not at a loss to de- 
scribe it. It is that change in the proportion 
of things which is much more than a mere 
change in perspective, or in point of view. It 
is that change which makes Death so recognis- 
able and too near; achievement necessarily im- 
perfect, and desire necessarily mixed with cal- 
culation. It is more than that. It is a sort of 
seeing things from that far side of them, which 
was only guessed at or heard of at second hand 
in earlier years, but which is now palpable and 
128 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

part of the senses : known. All who have passed 
a certain age know what I mean. 

This change, not so much in the aspect of 
things as in the texture of judgment, may mis- 
lead one when one judges youth; and it is best 
to trust to one's own memory of one's own 
youth if one would judge the young. 

There I see a boy of twenty-five looking 
solemn enough, and walking a little too stiffly 
down Cockspur Street. Does he think himself 
immortal, I wonder, as I did ? Does the thought 
of oblivion appal him as it did me? That he 
continually suffers in his dignity, that he thinks 
the passers-by all watch him, and that he is in 
terror of any singularity in dress or gesture, 
I can well believe, for that is common to all 
youth. But does he also, as did I and those of 
my time, purpose great things which are 
quite unattainable, and think the summit of 
success in any art to be the natural wage of 
living .f* 

Then other things occur to me. Do these 
young people suffer or enjoy all our old illu- 
129 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

sions? Do they think the country invincible? 
Do they vaguely distinguish mankind into rich 
and poor, and think that the former from whom 
they spring are provided with their well-being 
by some natural and fatal process, like the re- 
currence of day and night? Are they as full 
of the old taboos of what a gentleman may and 
may not do? I wonder! — Possibly they are. I 
have not seen one of them wearing a billycock 
hat with a tail coat, nor one of them smoking a 
pipe in the street. And is life divided for them 
to-day as it was then, into three periods : their 
childhood; their much more important years 
at a public school (which last fill up most of 
their consciousness) ; their new untried occupa- 
tion? 

And do they still so grievously and so happily 
misjudge mankind? I think they must, judg- 
ing by their eyes. I think they too believe that 
industry earns an increasing reward, that what 
is best done in any trade is best recognised 
and best paid ; that labour is a happy business ; 
and that women are of two kinds : the young 
130 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

who go about to please them, the old to whom 
they are indifferent. 

Do they drink? I suppose so. They do not 
show it yet. Do they gamble? I conceive they 
do. Are their nerves still sound? Of that 
there can be no doubt ! See them hop on and off 
the motor 'buses and cross the streets ! 

And what of their attitude towards the 
labels ? Do they take, as I did, every man much 
talked of for a great man? Are they diffident 
when they meet such men? And do they feel 
themselves to be in the presence of gods? I 
should much like to put myself into the mind 
of one of them and to see if, to that generation 
the simplest of all social lies is Gospel. If it 
is so, I must suppose they think a Prime Minis- 
ter, a Versifier, an Ambassador, a Lawyer who 
frequently comes up in the Press, to be some 
very superhuman person. And doubtless also 
they ascribe a sort of general quality to all 
much-talked-of or much-be-printed men, put- 
ting them on one little shelf apart, and all the 
rest of England in a ruck below. 
131 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

Then this thought comes to me. What of 
their bewilderment? We used all to be so be- 
wildered! Things did not fit in with the very 
simple and rigid scheme that was our most un- 
doubted creed of the State. The motives of 
most commercial actions seemed inscrutable 
save to a few base contemporaries no older than 
ourselves, but cads, men who would always re- 
main what we had first known them to be, small 
clerks upon the make. At what age, I wonder, 
to this generation will come the discovery that 
of these men and of such material the Great 
are made ; and will the long business of dis- 
covery come to sadden them as late as it came 
to their elders? 

I must believe that young man walking down 
Cockspur Street thinks that all great poets, all 
great painters, all great writers, all great 
statesmen, are those of whom he reads, and are 
all possessed of unlimited means and command 
the world. Further, I must believe that the 
young man walking down Cockspur Street (he 
has got to Northumberland Avenue by now), 
132 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

lives in a static world. For him things are im- 
movable. There are the old: fathers and 
mothers and uncles ; the very old are there, 
grandfathers, nurses, provosts, survivors. Only 
in books does one find at that age the change of 
human affection, child-bearing, anxiety for 
money, and death. All the children (he thinks) 
will be always children, and all the lovely women 
always young. And loyalty and generous re- 
gards are twin easy matters reposing natively 
in the soul, and as yet unbet rayed. 

Well, if they are all like that, or even most 
of them, the young people, quite half the world 
is happy. Not one of that happy half remem- 
bers the Lion of Northumberland House, or the 
little streets there were behind the Foreign 
Office, or the old Strand, or Temple Bar, or 
what Coutts's used to be like, or Simpson's, or 
Soho as yet uninvaded by the great and good 
Lord Shaftesbury. No one of the young can 
pleasantly recall the Metropolitan Board of 
Works. 

And for them, all the new things — houses 
133 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE 

which are veils of mud on stilts of iron, ad- 
vertisements that shock the night, the rush of 
taxi-cabs and the Yankee hotels — are the things 
that always were and always will be. 

A year to them is twenty years of ours. 
The summer for them is games and leisure, the 
winter is the country and a horse ; time is slow 
and stretched over long hours. They write a 
page that should be immortal, but will not be ; 
or they hammer out a lyric quite undistinguish- 
able from its models, and yet to them a 
poignantly original thing. 

Or am I all wrong? Is the world so rapidly 
changing that the Young also are caught with 
the obsession of change? Why, then, not even 
half the world is happy. 



134 



XVI 

ETHANDUNE 

In the parish of East Knoyle, in the county 
of Wiltshire, and towards the western side of 
that parish, there is an isolated knoll, gorse 
covered, abrupt, and somewhat over 700 feet 
above the sea in height. From the summit of it 
a man can look westward, northward, and east- 
ward over a great rising roll of countryside. 

To the west, upon the sky-line of a level 
range of hills, not high, runs that long wood 
called Selwood and there makes an horizon. To 
the north the cultivated uplands merge into 
high open down: bare turf of the chalk, which 
closes the view for miles against the sky, and is 
the watershed between the Northern and the 
Southern Avon. Eastward that chalk land falls 
into the valley which holds Salisbury. 

From this high knoll a man perceives the two 
days' march which Alfred made with his levies 
135 



ETHANDUNE 

when he summoned the men of three Shires to 
fight with him against the Danes ; he overthrew 
them at Ethandune. 

The struggle of which these two days were 
the crisis was of more moment to the history of 
Britain and of Europe than any other which has 
imperilled the survival of either between the 
Roman time and our own. 

That generation in which the stuff of society 
had worn most threadbare, and in which its 
continued life (individually the living memory 
of the Empire and informed by the Faith) was 
most in peril, was not the generation which saw 
the raids of the fifth century, nor even that 
which witnessed the breaking of the Mahom- 
medan tide in the eighth, when the Christians 
carried it through near Poitiers, between the 
River Vienne and the Chain, the upland south 
of Chatellerault. The gravest moment of peril 
was for that generation whose grandfathers 
could remember the order of Charlemagne, and 
which fought its way desperately through the 
perils of the later ninth century. 
136 



ETHANDUNE 

Then it was, during the great Scandinavian 
harry of the North and West, that Europe 
might have gone down. Its monastic establish- 
ment was shaken ; its relics of central govern- 
ment were perishing of themselves ; letters had 
sunk to nothing and building had already about 
it something nearly savage, when the swirl of 
the pirates came up all its rivers. And though 
legend had taken the place of true history, and 
though the memories of our race were confused 
almost to dreaming, we were conscious of our 
past and of our inheritance, and seemed to feel 
that now we had come to a narrow bridge which 
might or might not be crossed : a bridge already 
nearly ruined. 

If that bridge were not crossed there would 
be no future for Christendom. 

Southern Britain and Northern Gaul received 
the challenge, met it, were victorious, and so 
permitted the survival of all the things we 
know. At Ethandune and before Paris the 
double business was decided. Of these twin 
victories the first was accomplished in this 
137 



ETHANDUNE 

island. Alfred is its hero, and its site is that 
chalk upland, above the Vale of Trowbridge, 
near which the second of the two white horses 
is carved: the hills above Eddington and Brat- 
ton upon the Westbury road. 

The Easter of 878 had seen no King in Eng- 
land. Alfred was hiding with some small band 
in the marshes that lie south of Mendip against 
the Severn sea. It was one of those eclipses 
which time and again in the history of Chris- 
tian warfare have just preceded the actions by 
which Christendom has re-arisen. In Whitsun 
week Alfred reappeared. 

There is a place at the southern terminal of 
the great wood, Selwood, which bears a Celtic 
affix, and is called " Penselwood," " the head of 
the forest," and near it there stood (not to 
within living memory, but nearly so) a shire- 
stone called Egbert's Stone ; there Wiltshire, 
Somerset, and Dorset meet. It is just east- 
ward of the gap by which men come by the 
south round Selwood into the open country, 
There the levies, that is the lords of Somerset 
138 



ETHANDUNE 

and of Wiltshire and their followers, come also 
riding from Hampshire, met the King. But 
many had fled over sea from fear of the Pagans. 

" And seeing the King, as was meet, come to 
life again as it were after such tribulations, 
and receiving him, they were filled with an im- 
mense joy, and there the camp was pitched." 

Next day the host set out eastward to try its 
last adventure with the barbarians who had 
ruined half the West. 

Day was just breaking when the levies set 
forth and made for the uplands and for the 
water partings. Not by mere and the marshes 
of the valley, but by the great camp of White 
Sheet and the higher land beyond it, the line 
of marching and mounted men followed the 
King across the open turf of the chalk to 
where three Hundreds meet, and where the 
gathering of the people for justice and the 
courts of the Counts had been held before the 
disasters of that time had broken up the land. 

It was a spot bare of houses, but famous for 
a tree which marked the junction of the Hun- 
139 



ETHANDUNE 

dreds. No more than three hundred years ago 
this tree still stood and bore the name of the 
Iley Oak. The place of that day's camp stands 
up above the water of Deveril, and is upon the 
continuation of that Roman road from Sarum 
to the Mendips and to the sea, which is lost so 
suddenly and unaccountably upon its issue from 
the great Ridge wood. The army had marched 
ten miles, and there the second camp was 
pitched. 

With the next dawn the advance upon the 
Danes was made. 

The whole of that way (which should be 
famous in every household in this country) is 
now deserted and unknown. The host passed 
over the high rolling land of the Downs from 
summit to summit until — from that central 
crest which stands above and to the east of 
Westbury — they saw before them, directly 
northward and a mile away, the ring of earth- 
work which is called to-day " Bratton Castle." 
Upon the slope between the great host of the 
pirates came out to battle. It was there from 
140 



ETHANDUNE 

those naked heights that overlook the great 
plain of the Northern Avon, that the fate of 
England was decided. 

The end of that day's march and action was 
the pressing of the Pagans back behind their 
earthworks, and the men who had saved our 
great society sat down before the ringed em- 
bankment watching all the gates of it, killing 
all the stragglers that had failed to reach that 
protection and rounding up the stray horses 
and the cattle of the Pagans. 

That siege endured for fourteen days. At 
the end of it the Northmen treatied, conquered 
" by hunger, by cold, and by fear." Alfred 
took hostages " as many as he willed." Guth- 
rum, their King, accepted our baptism, and 
Britain took that upward road which Gaul 
seven years later was to follow when the same 
anarchy was broken by Eudes under the walls 
of Paris. 

All this great affair we have doubtfully fol- 
lowed to-day in no more than some three hun- 
dred words of Latin, come down doubtfully 
141 



ETHANDUNE 

over a thousand years. But the thing hap- 
pened where and as I have said. It should be 
as memorable as those great battles in which 
the victories of the Republic established our 
exalted but perilous modern day. 



142 



XVII 

THE DEATH OF ROBERT THE 
STRONG 

Up in the higher valley of the River Sarthe, 
which runs between low knolls through easy 
meadow-land, and is a place of cattle and of 
pasture, interspersed with woods of no great 
size, upon a summer morning a troop of some 
hundreds of men was coming down from the 
higher land to the crossings of the river. It 
was in the year 866. The older servants in 
the chief men's retinue could remember Charle- 
magne. 

Two leaders rode before the troop. They 
were two great owners of land, and each pos- 
sessed of commissions from the Imperial au- 
thority. The one had come up hastily north- 
wards from Poitiers, the other had marched 
westward to join him, coming from the Beauce, 
with his command. Each was a Comes, a Lord 
143 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

Administrator of a countryside and its capital, 
and had power to levy free men. Their re- 
tainers also were many. About them there 
rode a little group of aides, and behind them, 
before the footmen, were four squadrons of 
mounted followers. 

The force had already marched far that 
morning. It was winding in line down a roughly 
beaten road between the growing crops of the 
hillside, and far off in the valley the leaders 
watched the distant villages, but they could 
see no sign of their quarry. They were hunt- 
ing the pirates. The scent had been good from 
the very early hours when they had broken 
camp till lately, till mid-morning; but in the 
last miles of their marching it had failed them, 
and the accounts they received from the rare 
peasantry were confused. 

They found a cottage of wood standing 
thatched near the track at the place where it 
left the hills for the water meadows, and here 
they recovered the trace of their prey. A 
wounded man, his right arm bound roughly 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

with sacking, leaned against the door of the 
place, and with his whole left arm pointed at 
a group of houses more than a mile away be- 
yond the stream, and at a light smoke which 
rose into the still summer air just beyond a 
screen of wood in its neighbourhood. He had 
seen the straggling line of the Northern men 
an hour before, hurrying over the Down and 
coming towards that farm. 

Of the two leaders the shorter and more 
powerful one, who sat his horse the less easily, 
and whose handling of the rein was brutally 
strong, rode up and questioned and reques- 
tioned the peasant. Could he guess the num- 
bers? It might be two hundred; it was not 
three. How long had they been in the country- 
side.'' Four days, at least. It was four days 
ago that they h&d tried to get into the mon- 
astery, near the new castle, and had been 
beaten off by the servants at the orchard wall. 
What damage had they done? He could not 
tell. The reports were few that he had heard. 
His cousin from up the valley complained that 
14.5 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

three oxen had been driven from his fields by 
night. They had stolen a chain of silver from 
St. Giles without respect for the shrine. They 
had done much more — how much he did not 
know. Had they left any dead? Yes, three, 
whom he had helped to bury. They had been 
killed outside the monastery wall. One of his 
fields was of the monastery benefice, and he had 
been summoned to dig the graves. 

The lord who thus questioned him fixed him 
with straight soldierly eyes, and, learning no 
more, rode on by the side of his equal from 
Poitiers. That equal was armoured, but the 
lord who had spoken to the peasant, full of 
body and squat, square of shoulder, thick of 
neck, tortured by the heat, had put off from 
his chest and back his leather coat, strung with 
rings of iron. His servant had unlaced it for 
him some miles before, and it hung loose upon 
the saddle hook. He had taken off, also, the 
steel helm, and it hung by its strap to the same 
point. He preferred to take the noon sun 
upon his thick hair and to risk its action than 
146 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

to be weighed upon longer by that iron. And 
this though at any moment the turn of a spin- 
ney might bring them upon some group of the 
barbarians. 

Upon this short, resolute man, rather than 
upon his colleague, the expectation of the armed 
men was fixed. His repute had gone through 
all the North of Gaul with popular tales of his 
feats in lifting and in throwing. He was per- 
haps forty years of age. He boasted no line- 
age, but vague stories went about — that his 
father was from the Germanics ; that his father 
was from the Paris land ; that it was his mother 
who had brought him to court ; that he was a 
noble with a mystery that forbade him to speak 
of his birth ; that he was a slave whom the Em- 
peror had enfranchised and to whom he had 
given favour ; that he was a farmer's son ; a 
yeoman. 

On these things he had never spoken. No one 

had met men or women of his blood. But ever 

since his boyhood he had gone upwards in the 

rank of the empire, adding, also, one village to 

147 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

another in his possession, from the first which 
he had obtained no man knew how ; purchasing 
land with the profits of office after office. He 
had been Comes of Tours, Comes of Auxerre, 
Comes of Nevers. He had the commission for 
all the military work between Loire and Seine. 
There were songs about him, and myths and 
tales of his great strength, for it was at this 
that the populace most wondered. 

So this man rode by his colleague's side at 
the head of the little force, seeking for the 
pirates, when, unexpectedly, upon emerging 
from a fringe of trees that lined the flat 
meadows, his seat in the saddle stiffened and 
changed, and his eyes fired at what he saw. 
Two hundred yards before him was the stream, 
and over it the narrow stone bridge unbroken. 
Immediately beyond a group of huts and 
houses, wood and stone, and a heavy, low, 
round-arched bulk of a church marked the goal 
of the pirates — and there they were! They 
had seen the imperial levy the moment that it 
left the trees, and they were running — tall, 
148 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

lanky men, unkempt, some burdened with sacks, 
most of them armed with battle-axe or short 
spear. They were making for cover in the 
houses of the village. 

Immediately the two leaders called the mar- 
shallers of their levies, gave orders that the 
foot-men should follow, trotted in line over the 
bridge at the head of the squadron, and, once 
the water was passed, formed into two bodies 
of horse and galloped across the few fields into 
the streets of the place. 

Just as they reached the market square and 
the front of the old church there, the last of 
the marauders (retarded under the weight of 
some burden he would save) was caught and 
pinned by a short spear thrown. He fell, cry- 
ing and howling in a foreign tongue to gods of 
his own in the northland. But all his comrades 
were fast in the building, and there was a loud 
thrusting of stone statues and heavy furniture 
against the doors. Then, within a moment, an 
arrow flashed from a window slit, just missing 
one of the marshals. The Comes of Poitiers 
149 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

shouted for wood to burn the defence of the 
door, and villagers, misliking the task, were 
pressed. Faggots were dragged from sheds and 
piled against it. Even as this work was doing, 
man after man fell, as the defenders shot them 
at short range from within the church-tower. 

The first of the foot-men had come up, and 
some half-dozen picked for marksmanship were 
attempting to thread with their whistling 
arrows the slits in the thick walls whence the 
bolts of the Vikings came. One such opening 
was caught hy a lucky aim. For some moments 
its fire ceased, then came another arrow from it. 
It struck the Comes of Poitiers and he went 
down, and as he fell from his horse two servants 
caught him. Next, with a second shaft, the 
horse was struck, and it plunged and began a 
panic. No servant dared stab it, but a marshal 
did. 

Robert, that second count, the leader, had 

dismounted. He was in a fury, mixed with the 

common men, and striking at the great church 

door blow upon blow, having in his hand a stone 

150 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

so huge that even at such a moment they mar- 
velled at him. 

Unarmoured, pouring with sweat, though at 
that western door a great buttress still shaded 
him from the noonday sun, Robert the Strong 
thundered enormously at the oak. A hinge 
broke, and he heard a salute of laughter from 
his men. He dropped his instrument, lifted, 
straining, a great beam which lay there, and 
trundled it like a battering-ram against the 
second hinge. But, just as the shock came, an 
arrow from the tower caught him also. It 
struck where the neck joins the shoulder, and 
he went down. Even as he fell, the great door 
gave, and the men of the imperial levy, fighting 
their way in, broke upon the massed pirates 
that still defended the entry with a whirl of 
axe and sword. 

Four men tended the leader, one man hold- 
ing his head upon his knee, the three others 
making shift to lift him, to take him where he 
might be tended. But his body was no longer 
convulsed ; the motions of the arms had ceased ; 
151 



ROBERT THE STRONG 

and when the arrow was plucked at last from 
the wound, the thick blood hardly followed it. 
He was dead. 

The name of this village and this church was 
Brissarthe; and the man who so fell, and from 
whose falling soldier songs and legends arose, 
was the first father of all the Capetians, the 
French kings. 

From this man sprang Eudes, who defended 
Paris from the Sea-Rovers : Hugh Capet and 
Philip Augustus and Louis the Saint and Philip 
the Fair ; and so through century after century 
to the kings that rode through Italy, to Henri 
IV, to Louis XIV in the splendour of his wars, 
and to that last unfortunate who lost the Tuile- 
ries on August 10th, 1793. His line survives 
to-day, for its eldest heir is the man whom the 
Basques would follow. His expectants call him 
Don Carlos, and he claims the crown of Spain. 



152 



XVIII 

THE CROOKED STREETS 

Why do they pull down and do away with the 
Crooked Streets, I wonder, which are my de- 
light, and hurt no man living? 

Every day the wealthier nations are pulling 
down one or another in their capitals and their 
great towns : they do not know why they do it ; 
neither do I. 

It ought to be enough, surely, to drive the 
great broad ways which commerce needs and 
which are the life-channels of a modern city, 
without destroying all the history and all the 
humanity in between : the islands of the past. 
For, note you, the Crooked Streets are packed 
with human experience and reflect in a lively 
manner all the chances and misfortunes and ex- 
pectations and domesticity and wonderment of 
men. One marks a boundary, another the ken- 
nel of an ancient stream, a third the track some 
153 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

animal took to cross a field hundreds upon hun- 
dreds of years ago; another is the line of an 
old defence, another shows where a rich man's 
garden stopped long before the first ancestor 
one's family can trace was born ; a garden now 
all houses, and its owner who took delight in it 
turned to be a printed name. 

Leave men alone in their cities, pester them 
not with the futilities of great governments, 
nor with the fads of too powerful men, and they 
will build you Crooked Streets of their very 
nature as moles throw up the little mounds or 
bees construct their combs. There is no 
ancient city but glories, or has gloried, in a 
whole foison and multitude of Crooked Streets. 
There is none, however wasted and swept by 
power which, if you leave it alone to natural 
things, will not breed Crooked Streets in less 
than a hundred years and keep them for a 
thousand more. 

I know a dead city called Timgad, which 
the sand or the barbarians of the Atlas over- 
whelmed fourteen centuries ago. It lies between 
154 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

the desert and the Algerian fields, high up upon 
a mountain-side. Its columns stand. Even its 
fountains are apparent, though their waterways 
are choked. It has a great forum or market- 
place, all flagged and even, and the ruined walls 
of its houses mark its emplacement on every 
side. All its streets are straight, set out with 
a line, and by this you may judge how a Roman 
town lay when the last order of Rome sank 
into darkness. 

Well, take any other town which has not 
thus been mummified and preserved but has 
lived through the intervening time, and you 
will find that man, active, curious, intense, in 
all the fruitful centuries of Christian time has 
endowed them with Crooked Streets, which kind 
of streets are the most native to Christian men. 
So it is with Aries, so it is with Nimes, so it is 
with old Rome itself, and so it is with the City 
of London, on which by a special Providence 
the curse of the Straight Street has never fallen, 
so that it is to this day a labyrinth of little 
lanes. It was intended after the Great Fire to 
155 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

set it all out in order with " piazzas " and 
boulevards and the rest — but the English 
temper was too strong for any such nonsense, 
and the streets and the courts took to the 
natural lines which suit us best. 

The Renaissance indeed everywhere began 
this plague of vistas and of avenues. It was 
determined three centuries ago to rebuild Paris 
as regular as a chessboard, and nothing but 
money saved the town — or rather the lack of 
money. You may to this day see in a square 
called the " Place des Vosges " what was in- 
tended. But when they had driven their 
Straight Street two hundred yards or so the 
exchequer ran dry, and thus was old Paris 
saved. But in the last seventy years they have 
hurt it badly again. I have no quarrel with 
what is regal and magnificent, with splendid 
ways of a hundred feet or more, with great 
avenues and lines of palaces ; but why should 
they pull down my nest beyond the river — 
Straw Street and Rat Street and all those 
winding belts round the little Church of St. 
156 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

Julien the Poor, where they say that Dante 
studied and where Danton in the madness of 
his grief dug up his dead love from the earth 
on his returning from the wars. 

Crooked Streets will never tire a man, and 
each will have its character, and each will 
have a soul of its own. To proceed from one to 
another is like travelling in a multitude or mix- 
ing with a number of friends. In a town of 
Crooked Streets it is natural that one should 
be the Moneylenders' Street and another 
that of the Burglars, and a third that of the 
Politicians, and so forth through all the trades 
and professions. 

Then also, how much better are not the 
beauties of a town seen from Crooked Streets ! 
Consider those old Dutch towns where you sud- 
denly come round a corner upon great stretches 
of salt water, or those towns of Central France 
which from one street and then another show 
you the Gothic in a hundred ways. 

It is as it should be when you have the back 
of Chartres Cathedral towering up above you 
157 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

from between and above two houses gabled and 
almost meeting. It is what the builders meant 
when one comes out from such fissures into the 
great Place, the parvis of the cathedral, like a 
sailor from a river into the sea. Not that cer- 
tain buildings were not made particularly for 
wide approaches and splendid roads, but that 
these, when they are the rule, sterilize and kill 
a town. Napoleon was wise enough when he 
designed that there should lead all up beyond 
the Tiber to St. Peter's a vast imperial way. 
But the modern nondescript horde, which has 
made Rome its prey, is very ill advised to drive 
those new Straight Streets foolishly, emptily, 
with mean facades of plaster and great gaps 
that will not fill. 

You will have noted in your travels how the 
Crooked Streets gather names to themselves 
which are as individual as they, and which are 
bound up with them as our names are with all 
our own human reality and humour. Thus I 
bear in mind certain streets of the town where 
I served as a soldier. There was the Street of 
158 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

the Three Little Heaps of Wheat, the Street of 
the Trumpeting Moor, the Street of the False 
Heart, and an exceedingly pleasant street called 
" Who Grumbles at It? " and another short one 
called " The Street of the Devil in His Haste," 
and many others. 

From time to time those modern town coun- 
cillors from whom Heaven has wisely withdrawn 
all immoderate sums of money, and who there- 
fore have not the power to take away my 
Crooked Streets and put Straight ones in their 
places, change old names to new ones. Every 
such change indicates some snobbery of the 
time: some little battle exaggerated to be a 
great thing ; some public fellow or other, in 
Parliament or what not ; some fad of the learned 
or of the important in their day. 

Once I remember seeing in an obscure corner 
a twist of dear old houses built before George III 
was king, and on the corner of this row 
was painted " Kipling Street : late Nelson 
Street." 

Upon another occasion I went to a little 
159 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

Norman market town up among the hills, where 
one of the smaller squares was called " The 
Place of the Three Mad Nuns," and when I got 
there after so many years and was beginning to 
renew my youth I was struck all of a heap to 
see a great enamelled blue and white affair upon 
the walls. They had renamed the triangle. 
They had called it "The Place Victor 
Hugo " ! 

However, all you who love Crooked Streets, I 
bid you lift up your hearts. There is no power 
on earth that can make man build Straight 
Streets for long. It is a bad thing, as a general 
rule, to prophesy good or to make men feel com- 
fortable with the vision of a pleasant future ; 
but in this case I am right enough. The Crooked 
Streets will certainly return. 

Let me boldly borrow a quotation which I 
never saw until the other day, and that in 
another man's work, but which, having once 
seen it, I shall retain all the days of my 
life. 

*' Oh, passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque 
160 



THE CROOKED STREETS 

finem," or words to that effect. I can never be 
sure of a quotation, still less of scansion, and 
anyhow, as I am deliberately stealing it from 
another man, if I have changed it so much the 
better. 



161 



XIX 

THE PLACE APART 

Little pen, be good and flow with ink (which 
you do not always do) so that I may tell you 
what came to me once in a high summer and 
the happiness I had of it. 

One Summer morning as I was wandering 
from one house to another among the houses of 
men, I lifted up a bank from a river to a village 
and good houses, and there I was well enter- 
tained. I wish I could recite the names of those 
chance companions, but I cannot, for they did 
not tell me their names. June was just begin- 
ning in the middle lands where there are vines, 
but not many, and where the look of the stone- 
work is still northern. The place was not very 
far from the Western Sea. 

The bank on which the village stood above 
that river had behind it a solemn slope of wood- 
162 



THE PLACE APART 

land leading up gently to where, two miles or 
more away, yet not three hundred feet above 
me, the new green of the tree-tops made a line 
along the sky. Clouds of a little, happy, hurry- 
ing sort ran across the gentle blue of that 
heaven, and I thought, as I went onward into 
the forest upland, that I had come to very good 
things : but indeed I had come to things of a 
graver kind. 

A path went on athwart the woods and up- 
wards. This path was first regular, and then 
grew less and less marked, though it still pre- 
served a clear-way through the undergrowth. 
The new leaves were opened all about me, and 
there was a little breeze: yet the birds piped 
singly and the height was lonely when I reached 
it, as though it were engaged in a sort of con- 
templation. At the summit was first one small 
clearing and then another, in which coarse grass 
grew high within the walls of trees ; men had not 
often come that way, and those men only the 
few of the countryside. 

Just where the slope began to go downwards 
163 



THE PLACE APART 

again upon the further side, these little clear- 
ings ceased and the woods closed in again. The 
path, or what was left of it, wholly failed, and 
I had now to push my way through many twigs 
and interlacing brambles, till in a little while 
that forest ceased abruptly upon the edge of a 
falling sward, and I saw before me the Valley. 

Its floor must have lain higher than that 
river which I had crossed and left the same 
morning, for my ascent had been one of two 
miles or so, and my pushing downward on the 
further slope far less than one; moreover, that 
descent had been gentle. 

The Valley opened to the right at my issue 
from the wood. To my left hand was a circle 
of the same trees as those through which I had 
passed, but to the right and so away northward, 
the pleasant empty dale. 

Let me describe it. 

Upon the further bank (for it was not steep 

enough to call a wall), the western bank which 

shut that valley in, grew a thick growth of low 

chestnuts with here and there a tall silver birch 

164. 



THE PLACE APART 

standing up among them. All this further 
slope was so held, and the chestnuts made a 
dark belt from which the tall graces of the 
birches lifted. The sunlight was behind that 
long afternoon of hills. 

Opposite, the higher eastern slope stood full 
though gentle to the glorious light, and it was 
all a rise of pasture land. Its crest, which fol- 
lowed up and away northward for some miles, 
showed here and there a brown rock, aged and 
strong but low and half covered in the grass. 
These rocks were warm and mellow. The height 
of this eastern boundary was enough to protect 
the hollow below, but not so high as to carry 
any sense of savagery. It warned rather than 
forbade the approach of human kind. Between 
it and its opposing wooded fellow the narrow- 
ing floor of that Eden lay ; winding, closing 
slowly, until it ended in a little cuplike pass, 
an easy saddle of grass where the two sides of 
the valley converged upon its northern conclu- 
sion. This pass was perhaps four miles away 
from me as I gazed, or perhaps a little less. 
165 



THE PLACE APART 

The sun as I have said was shining upon all 
this : it made upon the little cuplike place a 
gentle shadow and a gentle light, both curved as 
the light might fall low and aslant upon a 
wooden bowl clothed in a soft green cloth. This 
was a lovely sight, and it invited me to go for- 
ward. 

Therefore I went down the sward that fell 
from the abrupt edge of the wood, and set out 
to follow northward along the lower grasses of 
this single and most unexpected vale. 

So strange was the place, even at this first 
sight, that I thought to myself : " I have hap- 
pened upon one of those holidays God gives us." 
For we cannot give ourselves holidays : nor, if 
we are slaves, can our masters give us holidays, 
but God only: until at last we lay down the 
business and leave our work for good and all. 
And so much for holidays. Anyhow, the valley 
was a wonder to me there. 

It was not as are common and earthly things. 
There was a peace about it which was not a 
mere repose, but rather something active which 
166 



THE PLACE APART 

invited and intrigued. The meadows had a 
summons in them; and all was completely still. 
I heard no birds from the moment when I left 
the woodland, but a little brook, not shallow, 
ran past me for a companion as I went on. It 
made no murmur, but it slid full and at once 
mysterious and prosperous, brimming up to the 
rich field upon either side. I thought there 
must be chalk beneath it from its way of going. 
The pasture was not mown yet it was short, 
but if it had been fed there was no trace of 
herds anywhere ; and indeed the grass was 
rather more in height than the grass of fed 
land, though it was not in flower. No wind 
moved it. 

There were no divisions in this little kingdom ; 
there were no walls or fences or hedges : it was 
all one field, with the woods upon the western 
slope to my left, and the tilted green of the 
eastern ridge to my right on which the sun- 
light softly and continually lay. Never have I 
found a place so much its own master and so 
contentedly alone. 

167 



THE PLACE APART 

If any man owned that Valley, blessed be 
that man, but if no man owned it, and only God, 
then I could better understand the benediction 
which it imposed upon me, a chance wanderer, 
for something little less than an hour. Here 
was a place in which thought settled upon itself, 
and was not concerned with unanswerable 
things ; and here was a place in which memory 
did not trouble one with the incompletion of re- 
cent trial, but rather stretched back to things 
so very old that all sense of evil had been well 
purged out of them. The ultimate age of the 
world which is also its youth, was here securely 
preserved. I was not so foolish as to attempt 
a prolongation of this blessedness : these things 
are not for possession : they are an earnest only 
of things which we may perhaps possess, but 
not while the business is on. 

I went along at a good sober pace of travel- 
ling, taking care to hurt no blossom with my 
staff and to destroy no living thing, whether of 
leaves or of those that have movement. 

So I went until I came to the low pass at 
168 



THE PLACE APART 

the head of the place, and when I had sur- 
mounted it I looked down a steep great fall 
into quite another land. I had come to a line 
where met two provinces, two different kinds of 
men, and this second valley was the end of one. 

The moor (for so I would call it) upon the 
further side fell away and away distantly, till 
at its foot it struck a plain whereon I could see, 
further and further off to a very distant 
horizon, cities and fields and the anxious life 
of men. 



169 



XX 

THE EBRO PLAIN 

I WISH I could put before men who have not 
seen that sight, the abrupt shock which the 
Northern eye receives when it first looks from 
some rampart of the Pyrenees upon the new 
deserts of Spain. 

" Deserts " is a term at once too violent and 
too simple. The effect of that amazement is 
by no means the effect which follows from a 
similar vision of the Sahara from the red- 
burnt and precipitous rocks of Atlas ; nor is it 
the effect which those stretches of white blind- 
ing sand give forth when, looking southward 
toward Mexico and the sun, a man shades his 
eyes to catch a distant mark of human habita- 
tion along some rare river of Arizona from the 
cliff edge of a cut tableland. 

Corn grows in that new Spain beneath one: 
many towns stand founded there; Christian 
170 



THE EBRD PLAIN 

Churches are established ; a human society 
stands firmly, though sparsely, set in that broad 
waste of land. But to the Northern eye first 
seeing it — nay, to a Northerner well acquainted 
with it, but returning to the renewal of so 
strange a vision — it is always a renewed per- 
plexity how corn, how men, how worship, how 
society (as he has known them) can have found 
a place there ; and that, although he knows that 
nowhere in Europe have the fundamental things 
of Europe been fought for harder and more 
steadfastly maintained than they have along 
this naked and burnt valley of the Ebro. 

I will suppose the traveller to have made his 
way on foot from the boundaries of the Basque 
country, from the Peak of Anie, down through 
the high Pyrenean silences to those banks of 
Aragon where the river runs west between par- 
allel ranges, each of which is a bastion of the 
main Pyrenean chain. I will suppose him to 
have crossed that roll of thick mud which the 
tumbling Aragon is in all these lower reaches, 
to have climbed the further range (which is 
171 



THE EBRO PLAIN 

called "The Mountains of Stone," or "The 
Mountains of the Rock")^ and, coming upon 
its further southern slope, to see for the first 
time spread before him that vast extent of 
uniform dead-brown stretching through an air 
metallically clear to the tiny peaks far off on 
the horizon, which mark the springs of the 
Tagus. It is a characteristic of the stretched 
Spanish upland, from within sight of the 
Pyrenees to within sight of the Southern Sea, 
that it may thus be grasped in less than half 
a dozen views, wider than any views in Europe; 
and, partly from the height of that interior 
land, partly from the Iberian aridity of its 
earth, these views are as sharp in detail, as in- 
human in their lack of distant veils and 
blues, as might be the landscapes of a dead 
world. 

The traveller who should so have passed the 
high ridge and watershed of the Pyrenees, would 
have come down from the snows of the Anie 
through forests not indeed as plentiful as those 
of the French side, but still dignified by many 
172 



THE EBRO PLAIN 

and noble trees, and alive with cascading water. 
While he was yet crossing the awful barriers 
(one standing out parallel before the next) 
which guard the mountains on their Spainward 
fall, he would continuously have perceived, 
though set in dry, unhospitable soil, bushes and 
clumps of trees ; something at times resembling 
his own Northern conception of pasture-land. 
The herbage upon which he would pitch his 
camp, the branches he would pick for firewood, 
still, though sparse and Southern, would have 
reminded him of home. 

But when he has come over the furthest of 
these parallel reaches, and sees at last the whole 
sweep of the Ebro country spread out before 
him, it is no longer so. His eye detects no 
trees, save that belt of green which accompanies 
the course of the river, no glint of water. 
Though human habitation is present in that 
landscape, it mixes, as it were, with the mud 
and the dust of the earth from which it rose ; 
and, gazing at a distant clump in the plains 
beneath him, far off, the traveller asks himself 
173 



THE EBRO PLAIN 

doubtfully whether these hummocks are but 
small, abrupt, insignificant hills or a nest of the 
houses of men — things with histories. 

For the rest all that immeasurable sweep of 
yellow-brown bare earth fills up whatever is not 
sky, and is contained or framed upon its final 
limit by mountains as severe as its own empty 
surface. Those far and dreadful hills are un- 
relieved by crag or wood or mist ; they are a 
mere height, naked and unfruitful, running 
along wall-like and cutting off Aragon from 
the south and the old from the new Castile, save 
where the higher knot of the Moncayo stands 
tragic and enormous against the sky. 

This experience of Spain, this first discovery 
of a thing so unexpected and so universally mis- 
stated by the pens of travellers and historians, 
is best seen in autumn sunsets, I think, when 
behind the mass of the distant mountains an 
angry sky lights up its unfruitful aspect of 
desolation, and, though lending it a colour it can 
never possess in commoner hours and seasons, 
in no way creates an illusion of fertility or of 
174 



THE EBRO PLAIN 

romance, of yield or of adventure, in that 
doomed silence. 

The vision of which I speak does not, I know, 
convey this peculiar impression even to all of 
the few who may have seen it thus — and they 
are rare. They are rare because men do not 
now approach the old places of Europe in the 
old way. They come into a Spanish town of the 
north by those insufficient railways of our time. 
They return back home with no possession of 
great sights, no more memorable experience 
than of urban things done less natively, more 
awkwardly, more slowly than in England. Yet 
even those few, I say, who enter Spain from 
the north, as Spain should be entered — 
over the mountain roads — have not all of 
them received the impression of which I 
speak. 

I have so received it, I know; I could wish 
that to the Northerner it were the impression 
most commonly conveyed : a marvel that men 
should live in such a place: a wonder when the 
ear catches the sound of a distant bell, that 
175 



THE EBRO PLAIN 

ritual and a creed should have survived there — 
so absolute is its message of desolation. 

With a more familiar acquaintance this im- 
pression does not diminish, but increases. 
Especially to one who shall make his way pain- 
fully on foot for three long days from the 
mountains to the mountains again, who shall toil 
over the great bare plain, who shall cross by 
some bridge over Ebro and look down, it may 
be, at a trickle of water hardly moving in the 
midst of a broad, stony bed, or it may be at a 
turbid spate roaring a furlong broad after the 
rains — in either case unusable and utterly un- 
friendly to man ; who shall hobble from little 
village to little village, despairing at the silence 
of men in that silent land and at their lack of 
smiles and at the something fixed which watches 
one from every wall ; who shall push on over the 
slight wheel-tracks which pass for roads — they 
are not roads — across the infinite, unmarked, 
undifFerenced field; to one who has done all 
these things, I say, getting the land into his 
senses hourly, there comes an appreciation of 
176 



THE EBRO PLAIN 

its wilful silence and of its unaccomplished soul. 
That knowledge fascinates, and bids him return. 
It is like watching with the sick who were 
thought dead, who are, in your night of 
watching, upon the turn of their evil. It 
is like those hours of the night in which the 
mind of some troubled sleeper wakened can find 
neither repose nor variety, but only a perpetual 
return upon itself — but waits for dawn. Be- 
hind all this lies, as behind a veil of dryness 
stretched from the hills to the hills, for those 
who will discover it, the intense, the rich, the 
unconquerable spirit of Spain. 



177 



XXI 

THE LITTLE RIVER 

Men forget too easily how much the things they 
see around them in the landscapes of Britain 
are the work of men. Most of our trees were 
planted and carefully nurtured by man's hand. 
Our ploughs for countless centuries have made 
even the soil of the plains the lines of a great 
view; its groups of hedge and of building, of 
ridge and of road are very largely the creation 
of that curious and active breed which was 
set upon this dull round of the earth to enliven 
it — which, alone of creatures, speaks and has 
foreknowledge of death and wonders concerning 
its origin and its end. It is man that has trans- 
formed the surface and the outline of the old 
countries, and even the rivers carry his handi- 
work. 

There is a little river on my land which very 
singularly shows the historical truth of what 
178 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

I am here saying. As God made it, it was but a 
drain rambling through the marshy clay of 
tangled underwood, sluggishly feeling its way 
through the hollows in general weathers, scour- 
ing in a shapeless flood after the winter rains, 
dried up and stagnant in isolated pools in our 
hot summers. Then, no one will ever know how 
many centuries ago, man came, busy and curi- 
ous, and doing with his hands. He took my 
little river; he began to use it, to make it, and 
to transform it, and to erect of it a human 
thing. He gave to it its ancient name, which is 
the ancient name for water, and which you will 
find scattered upon streams large and small from 
the Pyrenees up to the Northern Sea and from 
the West of Germany to the Atlantic. He 
called it the Adur; therefore pedants pretend 
that the name is new and not old, for pedants 
hate the fruitful humour of antiquity. 

Well, not only did man give my little river 

(an inconceivable number of generations ago) 

the name which it still bears, but he bridged it 

and he banked it, he scoured it and he dammed 

179 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

it, until he made of it a thing to his own 
purpose and a companion of the country- 
side. 

With the fortunes of man in our Western 
and Northern land the fortunes of my little 
river rose and fell. What the Romans may 
have done with it we do not know, for a clay 
soil preserves but little — coins sink in it and the 
foundations of buildings are lost. 

In the breakdown which we call the Dark 
Ages, and especially perhaps after the worst 
business of the Danish Invasion, it must have 
broken back very nearly to the useless and un- 
profitable thing it had been before man came. 
The undergrowth, the little oaks and the 
maples, the coarse grass, the thistle patches, 
and the briars encroached upon tilled land ; the 
banks washed down, floods carried away the 
rotting dams, the waterwheels were forgotten 
and perished. There seem to have been no mills. 
There is no good drinking water in that land, 
save here and there at a rare spring, unless you 
dig a well, and the people of the Dark Ages in 
180 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

Britain, broken by the invasion, dug no wells 
in the desolation of my valley. 

Then came the Norman: the short man with 
the broad shoulders and the driving energy, 
and that regal sense of order which left 
its stamp wherever he marched, from the 
Grampians to the Euphrates. He tamed that 
land again, he ploughed the clay, he cut the 
undergrowth, and he built a great house 
of monks and a fine church of stone where 
for so long there had been nothing but fly- 
ing robbers, outlaws, and the wolves of the 
weald. 

To my little river the Norman was par- 
ticularly kind. He dug it out and deepened it, 
he bridged it again and he sluiced it ; it brimmed 
to its banks, it was once more the companion of 
men, and, what is more, he dug it out so thor- 
oughly all the twenty miles to the sea that he 
could even use it for barges and for light boats, 
so that this head of the stream came to be called 
Shipley, for goods of ships could be floated, 
when all this was done, right up to the wharf 
181 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

which the Knight Templars had built above the 
church to meet the waters of the stream. 

All the Middle Ages that fruitfulness and 
that use continued. But with the troubles in 
which the Middle Ages closed and in which 
so much of our civilisation was lost, the 
little river was once more half abandoned. The 
church still stood, but stone by stone the great 
building of the Templars disappeared. The 
river was no longer scoured ; its course was 
checked by dense bush and reed, the wild beasts 
came back, the lands of the King were lost. 
One use remained to the water — the Norman's 
old canalisation was forgotten and the wharf 
had slipped into a bank of clay, and was now no 
more than a tumbled field with no deep water 
standing by. This use was the use of the Ham- 
mer Ponds. Here and there the stream was 
banked up, and the little fall thus afforded was 
used to work the heavy hammers of the smithies 
in which the iron of the countryside was worked. 
For in this clay of ours there was ironstone 
everywhere, and the many oaks of the weald 
182 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

furnished the charcoal for its smelting. The 
metal work of the great ships that fought the 
French, many of their guns also, and bells and 
railings for London, were smithied or cast at 
the issue of these Hammer Ponds. But coal 
came and the new smelting; our iron was no 
longer worked, and the last usefulness of the 
little river seemed lost. 

Then for two generations all that land lay 
apart, the stream quite choked or furiously 
flooding, the paths unworkable in winter: no 
roads, but only green lanes, and London, forty 
miles away, unknown. 

The last resurrection of the little river has 
begun to-day. The railway was the first bringer 
of good news (if you will allow me to be such 
an apologist for civilisation) ; then came good 
hard roads in numbers, and quite lately the 
bicycle, and, last of all, the car. The energy of 
men reached Adur once again, and once again 
began the scouring and making of the banks and 
the harnessing of the water for man ; so that, 
though we have not tackled the canal as we 
183 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

should (that will come), yet with every year 
the Adur grows more and more of a companion 
again. It has furnished two fine great lakes for 
two of my neighbours, and in one place after 
another they have bridged it as they should, and 
though clay is a doubtful thing to deal with 
they have banked it as well. 

The other day as I began a new and great 
and good dam with sluices and with puddled 
clay behind oak boards and with huge oak up- 
rights and oaken spurs to stand the rush of the 
winter floods, I thought to myself, working in 
that shimmering and heated air, how what I 
was doing was one more of the innumerable 
things that men had done through time incal- 
culable to make the river their own, and the 
thought gave me great pleasure, for one be- 
comes larger by mixing with any company of 
men, whether of our brothers now living or of 
our fathers who are dead. 

This little river — the river Adur before I have 
done with it — will be as charming and well- 
bred a thing as the Norman or the Roman 
184 



THE LITTLE RIVER 

knew. It shall bring up properly to well-cut 
banks. These shall be boarded. It shall have 
clear depths of water in spite of the clay, and 
reeds and water lilies shall grow only where I 
choose. In every way it shall be what the things 
of this world were made to be — the servant and 
the instrument of Man. 



185 



XXII 

SOME LETTERS OF SHAKE- 
SPEARE'S TIME 

From Lord Mulberry to his sister, Mrs. Blake 
My Dear Victoria, — Yes, by all means tell 
your young friend Mr. Shakespeare that he can 
come to Paxton on Saturday. As you say 
that he can't get away until the later train I 
will have Perkins meet liim from the village. I 
don't suppose he rides, but I can't mount him 
anyhow. I hope there is no trouble about 
Church on Sunday. 

From Mrs. Myers to Lady Clogg 
One thing I am looking forward to, dear, is 
this little coon Shakespeare. Victoria told me 
about him. She says sometimes he will play 
and sometimes he won't play. But she says 
he's quiet in harness just now. It seems that 
sometimes he talks all of a sudden. And one 
186 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

can get him to sing! Anyhow I do want to see 

what he's like. 

(The rest of this letter is about other matters.) 



From Messrs. Hornbull and Sons to William 
Shakespeare Esq. 
Sir, — ^We have now sent in our account three 
times, and the last time with a pressing recom- 
mendation that you should settle it, but you 
have not honoured us by any reply. We regret 
to inform you that if we do not receive a cheque 
by Wednesday the 22nd inst. we shall be com- 
pelled to put the matter into other hands. 

From John Shakespeare to has mother, 

Mrs. Shakespeare 
Dearest Mamma, — I am afraid Billie really 
can't pay that money this week. He was 
awfully apologetic about it and I gave him a 
good talking to, but if he hasn't got it he 
hasn't. After all it isn't absolutely necessary 
until the 30th. 

187 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

From Jonathan Truelove Esq. to William 
Shakespeare EsQf 

Dear Old Chap, — I am going to do some- 
thing very unconventional, but we know each 
other well enough I think. Can you let me have 
the £5 I lent you two years ago? I have to get 
in every penny I can this week, suddenly. If 
you can't don't bother to answer, I am not 
going to press you. 

From Sir Henry Portman, Attorney General, 
to the Secretary of the Crown Prosecutor 
Dear Jim, — No, I can't manage to get round 
to the Ritz this evening. Mary says that she 
wants Johnnie to leave Dresden. What incon- 
ceivable rubbish! Why can't she let him stay 
where he is? You might as well drown your- 
self as leave Dresden. What on earth could it 
lead to? 

By the way, do choke off that silly ass Bates, 

if he is still worrying about Shakespeare. No 

one wants anything done, and No. 1 would be 

awfully angry if there was a prosecution. 

188 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

Rather than allow it I would find the money 
myself. 

Yours, H. P. 

From James Jevons and Co. Publishers, to 
William Shakespeare Esq. 

Dear Sir, — Our attention has been called to 
your work by our correspondent in Edinburgh, 
and he asks us whether we think you could see 
your way to something dealing with Scottish 
history. He does not want it cast in the form 
of a play, for which he says there will be no 
sale with the Scottish public, seeing the exceed- 
ingly English cast of your work, but if you 
could throw it into Ballad form he thinks some- 
thing could be done with it. 

Of course such things can never be remunera- 
tive at first. The Edinburgh firm for whom he 
writes propose to buy sheets at 4^d. or 5d. and 
to give a royalty of 10 per cent, to be equally 
divided between our firm and yourself. They 
could not go beyond 500 copies for the first 
edition. It may be worth your while, in spite 
189 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

of the trifling remuneration, to consider this 
offer in order to secure copyright and to pre- 
vent any pirating of future editions in Scot- 
land. Pray advise. 
We are, 

Your obedient servants, 

James Jevons and Co. 

From Messrs. Firelight, Agents, to William 
Shakespeare Esq. 
Dear Mr. Shakespeare, — We have had a 
proposal from Messrs. Capon in the matter of 
your collected Poems. As you know, verse is 
not just now much in demand with the public, 
and they could not manage an advance on royal- 
ties. They propose 10 per cent, on a 5s. book 
after the first 250 copies sold. The honorarium 
is, of course, purely nominal, but it might lead 
to more business later on. Could you let us 
know your views upon the matter.? 
Very faithfully yours, 

pro Firelight and Co. 
C. G. 
190 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

From Clarence de Vere Chalmondeley to 

William Shakespeare Esq. 
Dear Sir, — Having certain sums free for 
investment, I am prepared to lend, not as a 
money-lender but as a private banker, sums 
from £10 to £50,000, on note of hand alone, 
without security. No business done with 
minors. 

Very faithfully yours, 

Clarence de Vere Chalmondeley. 



From William Shukespeare to Sir John Fowless 
{scribbled hastily in pencil) 
I will try and come if I can, but it's some- 
thing awful. I only got my proofs read by 2 
o'clock in the night ; I had to do my article for 
The Owl before 10 this morning, then I have 
got to go and meet the Church Defence League 
people on my way to the station, and catch a 
train to a place where Mrs. Blake wants me to 
go somewhere in the Midlands, about 5. I 
think I can look in on my way to the station. 
191 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

That man you asked me to see about the 
brandy is a fraud. Would you, like a good 
fellow, tell Charlie not to forget to mention in 
Ms article that " Hamlet " will only be played 
on Tuesdays and Fridays in the afternoon, 
matinees. Don't forget this because people 
want to know when it is going to be. There 
was a very good notice in The Jumper. I do 
feel so ill. 

W. S. 



From S. Jennings, Secretary, to 
George Mountebank Esq. 
Dear Sir, — Mr. Shakespeare is at present 
away from home and will return upon Thurs- 
day, when I will immediately lay your MSS. 
before him. 

I am, 

Very faithfully yours, 

S. Jennings, Secretary. 



192 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

From Mr. Mustwrite of Warwick to 
William Shakespeare Esq. 
Dear Mr. Shakespeare, — I have never met 
you, and perhaps you will think it a great im- 
pertinence on my part to be writing as I do. 
But I must write to tell you the deep and sincere 
pleasure I have received from your little 
brochure " Venus and Adonis," which the Rev. 
William Clarke, our Clergyman, lent me only 
yesterday. I read it through at a sitting and I 
could not rest until I had written to tell you 
the profound spiritual consolation I derived 
from its perusal. 

I am, dear Mr. Shakespeare, 
Very much your admirer, 

George Mustwrite, 



To William Shakespeare Esq. (unsigned, and 
•written in capital letters rather irregularly) 
No doubt you think yourself a fine fellow and 

the friend of the working man — I don't think! 

Some of us know more about you than you think 
193 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

we do. I erd you at the Queen's Hall and you 
made me sick. You aren't fit to black the 
boots of the man you talked against. 

To William Shakespeare Esq., O.H.M.S. 
{printed) 

Sir, — In pursuance with the provisions of 
Her Majesty's Benevolent Act, you are hereby 
required to prepare a true and correct state- 
ment of your emoluments from all forms of 
(in writing) literary income, duly signed by 
you within 21 days from this date. If, how- 
ever, you elect to be assessed by the District 
Commissioners under a number or a letter, &c. 
&c. &c. 

From the Earl of Essex to W. Shakespeare Esq. 
(lithographed ) 
Dear Sir, — I have undertaken to act as 
Chairman this year of the Annual Dinner of 
the League for the Support of Insufficiently 
Talented Dramatic Authors. You are doubt- 
less acquainted with the admirable objects of 
194 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

&c. &c. I hope I may see jour name among the 
stewards whose position is purely honorary, and 
is granted upon payment of five guineas, &c. &c. 
This laudable &c. &c. 

Very faithfully yours, 

Essex. 

From Mrs. Parxinson to William 
Shakespeare Esq. 
Dear Mr. Shakespeare, — Can you come 
and talk for our Destitute Pick Pockets Asso- 
ciation on Thursday the 18th? I know you are 
a very busy man, but I always find it is the 
most busy men, who somehow manage to find 
time for charitable objects. If you can man- 
age to do so I would send my motor round for 
you to Pilbury Row, and it would take you out 
to Rickmansworth where the meeting is to be. 
I am afraid it cannot take you back, but there 
is a convenient train at 20 minutes to 8, which 
gets you into London a little after 9 for dinner, 
or, if that is too late you might catch the 6.30, 
which gets you in at 8.15, only that will be 
195 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

rather a rush. My daughter tells me how much 
she admired your play, Macduff, and very much 
wants to see you. 

From the Duchess of Dump to William 

Shakespeare Esq. 
Dear Mr. Shakespeare, — I want to ask 
you a really great favour. Could you come to 
my Animals Ball on the 4th of June dressed up 
as a gorilla? I do hope you can. We have to 
tell people what costumes they are to wear for 
fear that they should duplicate. Now don^t 
say no. It's years since we met. Last 
February wasn't it.? 

Yours ever, 

Caroline Dump. 

Printed on Blue Paper with the Royal Arms 
In the name of the Queen's grace, Oyez ! 
Whereas there has appeared before Us 

Henry Holt a Commissioner of the Queen's, 

&c. &c. 

And Whereas the said Henry Holt maketh 
196 



IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

deposition that he has against you (m writing) 
William Shakespeare, a claim for the sum of 
(m writing) £27 2s. Id., now we hereby notify 
you that you are summoned to appear before 
us, &c. &c., upon {in writing) Wednesday the 
25th of May in the Year of Our Lord (in writ- 
ing) 1601, given under the Common Seal this 
(m writing) second day of May 1601. 

Henry Holt, a Commissioner of the Queen's 
&c. &c. 



197 



XXIII 

ON ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE 
GREAT 

It is generally recognised in this country that 
an acquaintance more or less familiar with the 
Great, that is, with the very wealthy, and 
preferably with those who have been wealthy 
for at least one generation, is the proper entry 
into any form of public service. 

I am in a position to advance for the benefit 
of younger men of my own social rank, certain 
views which I think will not be unprofitable to 
them in this matter. 

I will suppose my reader to be still upon the 
right side of thirty ; to be the son of some pro- 
fessional man ; to have been kept, at the ex- 
pense of some anxiety to his parents, for five 
years or so at a public school, and to have pro- 
ceeded to the University upon a loan. 

With such a start he cannot fail, if he is in 
198 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

any way lively or amiable, to have made the 
acquaintance by the age of twenty-two of a 
whole group of men whose fathers may properly 
be called " The Great," and who themselves will 
inherit a similar distinction, unless they die 
prematurely of hard living or hereditary 
disease. 

After such a beginning, common to many of 
my readers, the friendship and patronage of 
these people would seem to be secure; and yet 
we know from only too many fatal instances 
that it is nothing of the kind, and that of twenty 
young men who have scraped up acquaintance 
with their betters at Winchester or Magdalen 
(to take two names at random) not two are to 
be found at the age of forty still familiarly 
enjkering those London houses, which are rated 
at over £1000 a year. 

The root cause of such failures is obvious 
enough. 

The advantage of acquaintance with wealthy 
or important people would, so far as general 
opportunities go, be lost if one did not adver- 
199 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

tise it ; and here comes in a difficulty which has 
wrecked innumerable lives. For by a pretty 
paradox with which we are all of us only too 
well acquainted, the wealthy and important are 
particularly averse to the recitation of ac- 
quaintance with themselves. 

Formerly — about seventy years ago — your 
man who would succeed recited upon the 
slightest grounds, in public and with emphasis, 
his friendship with the Great. It was one of 
Disraeli's methods of advancement. The Great 
discovered the crude method, denounced it, 
vilified it, and towards the year 1860 it had 
already become impossible. William tells me 
he remembers his dear father warning me of 
this. 

Those who would advance in the next genera- 
tion were compelled to abandon methods so 
simple and to take refuge in allusion. Thus a 
young fellow in the late sixties, the seventies, 
and the very early eighties was helped in his 
career by professing a profound dislike for such 
and such a notability and swearing that he 
200 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

would not meet him. For to profess dislike 
was to profess familiarity with the world in 
which that notability moved. 

Or, again, to analyse rather curiously, and, 
on the whole, unfavourably, the character of 
some exceedingly wealthy man, was a method 
that succeeded well enough in hands of average 
ability. While a third way was to use Chris- 
tian names, and yet to use them with a tone of 
indifference, as though they belonged to ac- 
quaintances rather than friends. 

But the Great are ever on the alert, and this 
habit of allusion was in its turn tracked down 
by their unfailing noses ; so that in our own 
time it has been necessary to invent another. I 
do not promise it any long survival, I write 
only for the moment, and for the fashions of 
my time, but I think a young man is well ad- 
vised in this second decade of the twentieth cen- 
tury to assume towards the Great an attitude 
of silent and sometimes weary familiarity, and 
very often to pretend to know them less well 
than he does. 

201 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

Thus three men will be in a smoking room 
together. The one, let us say, will be the 
Master of the King's Billiard Room, an aged 
Jew who has lent money to some Cabinet Minis- 
ter; the second a local squire, well-to-do and 
about fifty years of age ; the third is my young 
reader, whose father, let us say, was a success- 
ful dentist. The Master of the King's Billiard 
Room will say that he likes "Puffy." The 
squire will say he doesn't like him much 
because of such and such a thing ; he will 
ask the young man for his opinion. Now, 
in my opinion, the young man will do well 
at this juncture to affect ignorance. Let him 
deliberately ask to have it explained to him 
who Puffy is (although the nickname may be 
familiar to every reader of a newspaper), and 
on hearing that it is a certain Lord Patterson 
he should put on an expression of no interest, 
and say that he has never met Lord Patterson. 

Something of the same effect is produced 
when a man remains silent during a long con- 
versation about a celebrity, and then towards 
202 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

the end of it says some really true and intimate 
thing about him, such as, that he rides in long 
stirrups, or that one cannot bear his double 
eyelids or that his gout is very amusing. 

Another very good trick, wliich still possesses 
great force, is to repudiate any personal ac- 
quaintance with the celebrity in question, and 
treat him merely as some one whom one has 
read of in the newspapers ; but next, as though 
following a train of thought, to begin talking 
of some much less distinguished relative of his 
with the grossest possible familiarity. 

A common and not ineffective way (which I 
mention to conclude the list) is to pretend that 
you have only met the Great Man in the way of 
business, at large meetings or in public places, 
where he could not possibly remember you, and 
to pretend this upon all occasions and very 
often. But this method is only to be used when, 
as a matter of fact, you have not met the 
celebrity at all. 

As for letting yourself be caught unawares 
and showing a real and naif ignorance of the 
203 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

Great, that is not only a fault against which 
I will not warn you, for I believe you to be in- 
capable of it, but it is also one against which it 
is of no good to warn any one, for whoever com- 
mits it has no chance whatsoever of that ad- 
vancement which it is the object of these notes 
to promote. 

When you are found walking with the Great 
in the street ( a thing which, as a rule, they feel 
a certain shyness in doing, at least in company 
with people of your position), it is as well, if 
your companion meets another of his own 
Order, to stand a little to one side, to profess 
interest in the objects of a neighbouring shop 
window, or the pattern of the railings. Such 
at least is the general rule to be laid down for 
those who have not the quickness or ability to 
seize at once the better method, which is as 
follows : 

Catch if you can the distant approach of the 
Other Great before your Great has spotted him, 
then, upon some pretext, preferably accom- 
panied by the pulling out of your watch, depart : 
204 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

for there is nothing that so annoys the Great 
during the conference of any two of them, as 
the presence of a third party of your station. 

Since my remarks must be put into a brief 
compass (though I have much more to say upon 
this all-important subject) I will conclude with 
what is perhaps the soundest piece of advice 
of aU. 

Never under any occasion or temptation, 
bestow a gift even of the smallest value, upon 
the Great. Never let yourself be betrayed into 
a generous action, nor, if you can possibly pre- 
vent it, so much as a generous thought in their 
regard. They are not grateful. They think 
it impertinent. And it looks odd. There is a 
note of equality about such things (and this 
particularly applies to unbosoming yourself in 
correspondence) which is very odious and offen- 
sive. Moreover, as has been proved in the case 
of countless unhappy lives, when once a man of 
the middle class falls into the habit of asking 
the Great to meals, of giving them books or 
pictures or betraying towards them in any 
205 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT 

fashion a spirit of true companionship, he 
bursts ; and that, as a rule, after a delay quite 
incredibly short. Some men of fair substance 
have to my knowledge been wholly ruined in this 
manner within the space of one parliamentary 
session, a hunting season, or even a single week 
at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight ; from which spot 
I send these presents, and where, by the way, 
at the time of writing, the stock of forage in 
the forecastle is extremely low, with no sup- 
plies forthcoming from the mainland. 
God bless you ! 



W6 



XXIV 

ON LYING 

He that will set out to lie without having cast 
up his action and judged it this way and that, 
will fail, not in his lie, indeed, but in the object 
of it; which is, imprimis, to deceive, but in 
ultimis or fundamentally, to obtain profit by 
his deceit, as Aristotle and another clearly 
show. For they that lie, lie not vainly and 
wantonly as for sport (saving a very few that 
are habitual), but rather for some good to be 
got or evil to be evaded: as when men lie of 
their prowess with the fist, though they have 
fought none — no, not even little children — or 
in the field, though they have done no more than 
shoot a naked blackamoor at a furlong. These 
lie for honour. Not so our stockers and job- 
bers, who lie for money direct, or our parlia- 
ment men, who lie bestraught lest worse befall 
them. 

207 



ON LYING 

Lies are distinguished by the wise into the 
Pleasant and the Useful, and again into the 
Beautiful and the Necessary. Thus a lie giv- 
ing comfort to him that utters it is of the Lie 
Pleasant, a grateful thing, a cozening. This 
kind of lies is very much used among women. 
This sort will also make out good to the teller, 
evil to the told, for the pleasure the cheat gives ; 
as, when one says to another that his worst 
actions are now known and are to be seen 
printed privately in a Midland sheet, and bids 
him fly. 

The lie useful has been set out ut supra, 
which consult; and may be best judged by one 
needing money. Let him ask for the same and 
see how he shall be met ; all answers to him shall 
be of this form of lie. It is also of this kind 
when a man having no purse or no desire to 
pay puts sickness on in a carriage, whether by 
rail or in the street, crying out : " Help ! help ! " 
and wagging his head and sinking his chin upon 
his breast, while his feet patter and his lips 
dribble. Also let him roll his eyes. Then 
208 



ON LYING 

some will say : " It is the heat ! The poor fel- 
low is overcome ! " Others, " Make way ! make 
way ! " Others, men of means, will ask for the 
police, whereat the poorer men present will 
make off. But chiefly they that should have 
taken the fare will feel kindly and will lift the 
liar up gently and convey him and put him to 
good comfort in some waiting place or other till 
he be himself — and all the while clean forget 
his passage. For such is the nature of their 
rules. Lord Hincksey, now dead, was very 
much given to this kind of lie, and thought it 
profitable. 

You shall lie at large and not be discovered; 
or a little, and for once, and yet come to public 
shame, as it was with Ananias and his good 
wife Sapphira in Holy Scripture, who lied but 
once and that was too often. While many have 
lied all their lives long and come to no harm, like 
John Ade, of North-Chapel, for many years a 
witness in the Courts that lied professionally, 
then a money-lender, and lastly a parliament- 
man for the county: yet he had no hurt of all 
209 



ON LYING 

this that any man could see, but died easily in 
another man's bed, being eighty-three years of 
age or thereabouts, and was very honourably 
buried in Petworth at a great charge. But 
some say he is now in Hell, which God grant ! 

There is no lie like the winsome, pretty, 
flattering, dilating eyelid-and-lip-and-brow-lift- 
ing lie such as is used by beauty impoverished, 
when land is at stake. By this sort of lie many 
men's estates have been saved, none lost, and 
good done at no expense save to holiness. Of 
the same suit also is the lie that keeps a parasite 
in a rich man's house, or a mixer attendant 
upon a painter, a model upon a sculptor, and 
beggars upon all men. 

Fools will believe their lies, but wise men also 
will take delight in them, as did the Honourable 
Mr. Gherkin, for some time His Majesty's Min- 
ister of State for the Lord Knows What, who, 
when policemen would beslaver him, and put 
their hands to their heads and pay court in a 
low way, told all that saw it what mummery it 
was ; yet inwardly was pleased. The more at a 
210 



ON LYING 

loss was he when, being by an accident in the 
Minories too late and his hat lost, his coat torn 
and muddy, he made to accost an officer, and 

civilly saying, " Hi " had got no further 

but he took such a crack on the crown with 
a truncheon as laid him out for dead, and he 
is not now the same as he was, nor ever will be. 

Ministers of religion will both show forth to 
the people the evil of lying and will also lie 
themselves in a particular manner, very distinct 
and formidable : as was clear when one de- 
nounced from the pulpit the dreadful vice of 
hypocrisy and false seeming, whereat a drunk- 
ard not yet sober, hearing him say, " Show me 
the hypocrite ! " rose where he was, full in 
church, and pointed to the pulpit, so that he 
was thrust out for truth-telling by gesture in 
that sacred place ; as was that other who, when 
the preacher came to " Show me the drunkard," 
jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the par- 
son's wife : a very mutinous act. But to Lying. 

He that takes lying easily will take life 
hardly ; as the saw has it, " Easy lying makes 
211 



ON LYING 

hard hearing," but your constructed and con- 
sidered, your well-drafted lie — that is the lie 
for men grown, men discreet and fortunate. To 
which effect also the poet Shakespeare says in 
his Sonnets — but no matter ! The passage is 
not for our ears or time, dealing with a dark 
woman that would have her Will : as women also 
must if the world is to wag, which leads me to 
that sort of lie common to all the sex of which 
we men say that it is the marvellous, the potent, 
the dextrous, the thorough, or better still, the 
mysterious, the uncircumvented and not ex- 
plainable, the stopping-short and confounding- 
against-right-reason lie, the triumphant lie of 
Eve our mother : Iseult our sister : Judith, an 
aunt of ours, who saved a city, and Jael, of 
holy memory. 

But if any man think to explain that sort 
of lie, he is an ass for his pains ; and if any man 
seek to copy it he is an ass sublimate or com- 
pound, for he attempts the mastery of women. 

Which no man yet has had of God, or will. 

Amen. 

212 



XXV 

THE DUPE 

The Dupe is an honest creature, and such 
honesty is the noblest work of God. The Dupe 
is not the servant of the Knave, but his ally. 
The Dupe does not, as too simple a political 
philosophy would have it, serve only for a mate- 
rial on which the Knave shall work; he is also 
the moral support of the Knave, strengthening 
and comforting the Knave's most inward soul 
and lending lubrication to the friction of public 
falsehood. For the Knave is of many sorts, 
and the Dupe helps them all. 

The plumb Knave, or Knave Absolute, finds 
in the Dupe such an honest creature as does not 
revile him, and it is good to know that one is 
loved by some few honest souls. Thus the 
Knave Absolute is foolish indeed when he lets 
the Dupe see by gesture or tone that he thinks 
213 



THE DUPE 

him a fool, for the Dupe is very sensitive and 
touchy in all weathers. 

The Knave Qualified (in his many incarna- 
tions) must have the Dupe about him or perish. 
Thus the Knave who would save his soul by self- 
deception feeds, cannibal-like, upon the straight- 
forwardness of the Dupe, and says to himself: 
" How can I be such a Knave after all, since 
these good Dupes here heartily agree with me? " 

The Knave Cowardly props himself upon that 
that sort of courage in the Dupe which always 
accompanies virtue. " I run a risk," says he, 
*' in proposing the State purchase of this or 
that at such and such a price. My friend the 
Old Knave went under thus in 1895; but the 
Good Dupe is a buckler in the fight; he will 
dare all because his heart is pure." 

The Knave Slovenly looks to the Dupe to see 
to details and to meet men in ante-chambers, 
and to have kind, honest eyes in bargaining. 
This sort of Knave will have two or even three 
Dupes for private secretaries, and often one for 
a brother-in-law. 

214 



THE DUPE 

The Dupe is in God's providence very numer- 
ous, for his normal rate of breeding is high in 
the extreme, his normal death-rate low. On this 
account those curious in this part of natural 
history may watch the Dupes going about in 
great herds, conducted and instructed by the 
Knave; nor is the one to be distinguished from 
the other by the coat, but rather by the snout 
and visage, the eyes and, if one be old enough 
to open the mouth, by the teeth. The Dupe, 
upon the other hand, will not be of great 
service in any physical struggle and must not 
be depended upon for this. It is his delight to 
browse and when disturbed he scatters rather 
than flies. Here and there a Rogue Dupe will 
turn upon his pursuers, in which case he is in- 
variably devoured. 

The Dupe has his habitat, but that not easily 
defined, as in the suburbs of great cities, and in 
those towns called residential, where the leisured 
and the inane make their lives seem so much 
longer than those of others. But there are ex- 
ceptions also to this, and the Dupe will some- 
215 



THE DUPE 

times migrate in vast numbers from one spot to 
another in such few years as wholly to discom- 
fit the calculations of the Knaves. Some of 
these have been found to stand up in public 
halls before numbers whom they had thought to 
be Dupes (seeing that the locality was Little 
Partington) but only to discover a great boil- 
ing of Anti-Dupes, men working with their 
hands or what-not, quite undeceivable, as often 
as not Atheist, and ready to storm the plat- 
form and tear the Knave alive. 

The Dupe loves courtesy and, as has been 
said above, will tolerate no hint of impatience. 
On the other hand, he needs no breaking in and 
will carry upon the back from his earliest years. 
It is incredible to travellers when they first come 
across the Dupe what burdens he will bear in 
this fashion, so that sometimes the whole Plain 
appears to be a moving mass of gold bags, pub- 
lic salaries, contracts, large houses, yachts, 
motor-cars, opera houses, howdahs sheltering 
masters and mistresses, cases of wine, rich 
foods, and charitable institutions, all as it 
216 



THE DUPE 

were endowed with a motion of their own 
until you stoop down and perceive that the 
whole of this vast weight sways securely 
upon the backs of an enormous migratory 
body of Dupes upon the trek for a Better 
Land. 

The Dupe also differs from other creatures 
in that he will sleep comfortably with such 
things upon his back, nor ever roll over upon 
them, and that he will bear them to a great old 
age and even to death itself without dispute. 
Indeed the Dupe unburdened has about him a 
forlorn and naked feeling to which it were a 
pity to condemn him. His food must be ample, 
but there is no need to prepare it carefully, and 
he will eat almost anything that is given him, 
except a leek, which he will not touch unless he 
be told that it is an onion. Of wheat he takes 
very little, but he insists that a great portion 
be put before him, that he may munch and 
trample upon it. Why he manifests this appe- 
tite is not known, but upon any attempt to 
lessen the ration he will kick, buck, and rear, 
217 



THE DUPE 

and behave in a manner altogether out of his 
nature. 

The Dupe must be given drink at irregular in- 
tervals, but he loves to treat it shyly, and to 
flirt with it as it were. There is no prettier 
sight than to see a number of Dupes met to- 
gether arching and curvetting, side-glancing 
and denying, before they plunge their heads 
and manes into the life-giving liquid. 

It is the reward of the Dupe that he is all 
his life very consistently happy, and on this 
account many not born Dupes, imitate the 
Dupes and would be of them, in which they fail, 
for the Dupe is God's creature and not man's, 
and proceeds by moral generation as has 
already been affirmed. 



218 



XXVI 

THE LOVE OF ENGLAND 

Love of country is general to mankind, yet is 
not the love of country a general thing to be 
described by a general title. Love changes 
with the object of love. The country loved 
determines the nature of its services. 

The love of England has in it the love of 
landscape, as has the love of no other country : 
it has in it as has the love of no other country, 
the love of friends. Less than the love of other 
countries has it in it the love of what may be 
fixed in a phrase or well set down in words. It 
lacks, alas, the love of some interminable past 
nor does it draw its liveliness from any great 
succession of centuries. Say that ten centuries 
made a soil, and that in that soil four centuries 
more produced a tree, and that that tree was 
England, then you will know to what the love of 
England is in most men directed. For most 
219 



THE LOVE OF ENGLAND 

men who love England know so little of her first 
thousand years that when they hear the echoes 
of them or see visions of them, they think they 
are dealing with a foreign thing. All English- 
men are clean cut off from their long past which 
ended when the last Mass was sung at West- 
minster. 

The love of England has in it no true plains 
but fens, low hills, and distant mountains. No 
very ancient towns, but comfortable, small and 
ordered ones, which love to dress themselves with 
age. The love of England concerns itself with 
trees. Accident has given to the lovers of 
England no long pageantry of battle. Nature 
has given Englishmen an appetite for battle, 
and between the two men who love England 
make a legend for themselves of wars unfought, 
and of arms permanently successful; though 
arms were they thus always successful would not 
be arms at all. 

The greatness of the English soul is best 
discovered in that strong rebuke of excesses, 
principally of excess in ignorance, which a 
220 



THE LOVE OF ENGLAND 

minority of Englishmen perpetually express, 
but which has not sufficed as yet to save the 
future of England. In no other land will you 
so readily discover critics of that land ready 
to bear all for their right to doubt the common 
policy; but though you will nowhere discover 
such men so readily, nowhere will you discover 
them so impotent or so few. 

The love of England breeds in those who 
cherish it an attachment to institutions which, 
is half reverential, but also half despairing. 
In its reverence this appetite produces one hun- 
dred living streams of action and of vesture and 
of custom. In its despair, in its refusal to con- 
sider upon what theory the institution lies, it 
permits the institution to sterilise with age and 
to grow fantastic. 

The love of England has never destroyed, 
but at times, and again at closer and at closer 
times (while we have lived) it has failed to save. 
Yet it will save England in the end. Men are 
more bound together by this music in their 
souls than by an}-^ other, wherever England is 
221 



THE LOVE OF ENGLAND 

or is spoken of by Englishmen. Here you may 
discover what religion has been to many, and 
also you may discover here how legend and how 
epics arise. In men cut off from England, the 
love of England grows into a set repetitive 
thing, a thing of peculiar strength yet almost 
barren. Nourished and exampled by England, 
flourishing upon the field of England, the love 
of England is a love of the very earth: of the 
smell of growing things and of certain skies, 
and of tides in river-mouths, and of belts of 
sea. 

If a man would understand this great thing 
England which is now in peril and which has so 
worked throughout the world, he must not 
consider the accident of England's success and 
failure, nor certain empty lands filled without 
battle, nor others ruined by folly, nor certain 
arts singularly discovered and perfected by 
England, nor other arts as singularly neglected 
and decayed. Nor must he contrast the pas- 
sionate love of England with some high religion 
of which it takes the place, nor with some active 
222 



THE LOVE OF ENGLAND 

work in contrast with which it seems so empty 
and unproducing a thing. He must not set it 
against a creed (it is not so high as that), nor 
against a conquest or a true empire such as 
Spain and Rome possessed. 

If a man would understand the love of Eng- 
land he must do what hardly any one would 
dare to do : that is, he must clearly envisage 
England defeated in a final war and ask himself, 
"What should I do then?" 



223 



XXVII 

THE STORM 

There is a contemptible habit of mind (con- 
temptible in intellect, not in morals) which would 
withdraw from the mass of life the fecundity of 
perception. 

The things that we see are, according to the 
interpretation of the mystics, every one of them 
symbols and masks of things unseen. The mys- 
tics have never proved their theory true. But 
it is undoubtedly true that the perception of 
things when it is sane is manifold; it is true 
that as we grow older the perception of things is 
increasingly manifold, and that one perception 
breeds one hundred others, so that we advance 
through life as through a pageant enjoying in 
greater and greater degree day by day (if we 
open ourselves to them) the glorious works of 
God. 

There is a detestable habit of mind, which 
224 



THE STORM 

either does not understand, or sneers at, or 
despises, or even wholly misses — when it is per- 
sisted in — this faculty for enjoyment, which 
even our gross senses endow us with. This evil 
habit of the mind will have us neglect first 
colour for form, then form for mere number. 
It would have us reject those intimations of high 
and half-remembered things which a new aspect 
of a tree or house or of a landscape arouses in 
us. It would compel us to forget, or to let grow 
stale, the pleasure with which the scent of 
woods blest us in early youth. Perpetually this 
evil habit of the mind would flatten the diversity 
of our lives, suck out the sap of experience, kill 
humour and exhaust the living spring. It 
whispers to us the falsehood that years in 
their advance leave us in some way less alive, 
it adds to the burden upon our shoulders, not 
a true weight of sad knowledge as life, however 
well lived, must properly do, but a useless drag 
of despair. It would make us numb. In the 
field of letters it would persuade us that all 
things may be read and known and that nothing 
225 



THE STORM 

is worth the reading or the knowing, and that 
the loveliest rhythms or the most subtle con- 
notations of words are but tricks to be despised. 
In the field of experience it would convince us 
that nothing bears a fruit and that human life 
is no more than anarchy or at best an unex- 
plained fragment. Even in that highest of 
fields, the field of service, it would persuade us 
that there is nothing to serve. And if we are 
convinced of that, then every faculty in us turns 
inward and becomes useless : may be called 
abortive and fails its end. 

These thoughts arose in me as I watched 
to-day from the platform of my Mill the ad- 
vance of a great storm cloud; for in the 
majestic progress which lifted itself into the 
sky and marched against the north from the 
Channel I perceived that which the evil, mod- 
ern, drying habit of thought would neglect and 
would attempt to make material, and also that 
which I very well knew was in its awf ulness allied 
to the life of the soul. 

For very many days the intense heat had 
226 



THE STORM 

parched the Weald. The leaves dropped upon 
the ash and the oak, the grass was brown, our 
wells had failed. The little river of the clay 
was no more than several stagnant pools. We 
thought the fruits would wither; and our 
houses, not built for such droughts and such 
an ardent sun, were like ovens long after the 
cool of the evening had come. 

At the end of some days one bank of cloud 
and then another had passed far off east or 
far to the west, over the distant forest ridge 
or over Egdean Side, missing us. We had 
printed stuff from London telling us how it 
had rained in London — as though rain falling 
in London ever fell upon earth or nourished 
fruits and men ! 

We thought that we were not to be allowed 
any little rain out of Heaven. But to-day 
the great storm came up, marching in a dark 
breastplate and in skirts of rain, with thunders 
about it ; and it was personal. It came right 
up out of the sea. It walked through the gate 
which the River Adur has pierced, leaving upon 
227 



THE STORM 

either side the high chalk hills; the crest of its 
helmet carried a great plume of white and men- 
acing cloud. 

No man seeing this creature as it moved 
solemn and panoplied could have mistaken the 
memory or the knowledge that stirred within 
him at the sight. This was that gi'eat master, 
that great friend, that great enemy, that great 
idol (for it has been all of these things), which, 
since we have tilled the earth, we have watched, 
we have welcomed, we have combated, we have 
unfortunately worshipped. This was that God 
of the Storm which has made such tremendous 
music in the poets. 

The Parish Church, which had seemed un- 
der the hard blue sky of the early morning a 
low brown thing, with its square tower of the 
Templars and of the Second Crusade, stood 
up now white, menacing, and visionary against 
the ink of the cloud. The many trees of the 
rich man's park beyond were taller, especially 
the elms. They stood absolutely and stub- 
bornly still, no leaves upon them moving at all. 
228 



THE STORM 

The Downs an hour awaj first fell dull, low, 
and leaden. These were but half seen, and at 
last faded altogether into the gloom. The 
many beasts round about were struck with 
silence. The fowls nestled together, and the 
only sign that animate nature gave of an ap- 
proaching stroke was the whinny of a horse in 
a stable where the door was left wide open to 
the stifling air, and the mad circling and swoop- 
ing of a bird distracted by the change in the 
light. 

For the sun was now blotted out, and the 
enormous thing was upon us like a foe. First 
I saw from the high platform of my Mill a 
sort of driving mist or whirl, which at first 
I thought to be an arrow-shoot of rain ; but 
looking again I saw it to be no more than 
the dust of many parched fields and lanes, 
driving before the edge of the thunder. There 
was a wind preceding all this like a herald. In 
a moment the oppressive air grew cool. It grew 
cool by a leap. It was like the descent into a 
cellar; it was like the opening of a mine door 
229 



THE STORM 

to a draft. The vigour of the mind, dulled by 
so many days of heat and nights without re- 
freshment, leaped up to greet this change, 
which, though it came under a solemn and un- 
comforting aspect, gave breath and expansion. 
One might for some five minutes have imagined 
as the dust clouds advanced and the furious 
shaking of the trees and hedges a mile away be- 
gan to be heard as well as seen, that the call of 
coolness for work had come. Then that wall of 
wind hit the two great oaks of my neighbour 
next to my own frontier trees. The fan of the 
Mill groaned, turning a little; it turned furi- 
ously, and the strength of the storm was upon 
us. It lightened, single and double and four- 
fold. The blinding fire sprang from arch to 
arch of an incredible architecture, higher than 
anything you might dream of, larger than the 
mountains of other lands. The thunder ran 
through all this, not very loud but continuous, 
and a sweep of darkness followed like a train 
after the movement of the cloud. White 
wreaths blown out in jets as though by some 
£30 



THE STORM 

caprice in wilful shapes showed here and there, 
and here and there, against such a blackness, 
grey cloudlets drifted very rapidly, hurrying 
distracted left and right without a purpose. All 
the while the rain fell. 

The village and the landscape and the 
Weald, the Rape, the valley, all my county 
you would have said, was swallowed up, oc- 
cupied, and overwhelmed. It was more ma- 
jestic than an army; it was a victory more ab- 
solute than any achievement of arms, and while 
it flashed and poured and proclaimed itself 
with its continual noise, it was itself, as it were, 
the thing in which we lived, and the mere earth 
was but a scene upon which the great storm trod 
for the purpose of its pageant. 

When the storm had passed over northward to 
other places beyond, and when at evening the 
stars came out very numerous and clear in a 
sky which the thunder had not cooled, and 
when the doubtful summer haze was visible 
again very low upon the distant horizon, over 
the English sea, the memory of all this was like 
231 



THE STORM 

the memory of a complete achievement. No 
one who had seen the storm could doubt purpose 
or meaning in the vastness of things, nor the 
creative word of Almighty God. 



232 



XXVIII 

THE VALLEY 

Everybody knows, I fancy, that kind of land- 
scape in which hills seem to lie in a regular 
manner, fold on fold, one range behind the 
other, until at last, behind them all, some higher 
and grander range dominates and frames the 
whole. 

The infinite variety of light and air and 
accident of soil provide all men, save those 
who live in the great plains, with examples 
of this sort. The traveller in the dry air of 
California or of Spain, watching great dis- 
tances from the heights, will recollect such 
landscapes all his life. They were the reward 
of his long ascents, and they were the sunset 
visions which attended his effort when at last 
he had climbed to the utmost ridge of his 
day's westward journey. Such a landscape 
does a man see from the edges of the Guadar- 
S33 



THE VALLEY 

rama, looking eastward and south toward the 
very distant hills that guard Toledo and the 
ravines of the Tagus. Such a landscape does 
a man see at sunrise from the highest of the 
Cevennes looking right eastward to the dawn as 
it comes up in the pure and cold air beyond the 
Alps, and shows you the falling of their foot- 
hills, a hundred miles of them, right down to the 
trench of the Rhone. And by such a landscape 
is a man gladdened when, upon the escarpments 
of the Tuolumne, he turns back and looks west- 
ward over the Stockton plain towards the coast 
range which guards the Pacific. 

The experience of such a sight is one peculiar 
in travel, or, for that matter, if a man is lucky 
enough to enjoy it near his home, insistent 
and reiterated upon the mind of the home- 
dwelling man. Such a landscape, for instance, 
makes a man praise God if his house is upon 
the height of Mendip, and he can look over 
falling hills right over the Vale of Severn 
toward the rank above rank of the Welsh 
solemnities beyond, until the straight line and 
234 



THE VALLEY 

height of the Black Mountain against the sky 
bounds his view and frames it. 

It is the character of these landscapes to 
suggest at once a vastness, a diversity, and a 
seclusion. When a man comes upon them un- 
expectedly he can forget the perpetual toil of 
men and imagine that those who dwell below in 
the nearer glens before him are exempt from 
the necessities of this world. When such a 
landscape is part of a man's dwelling place, 
though he well knows that the painful hfe of 
men within those hills is the same hard business 
that it is throughout the world, yet his knowl- 
edge is modified and comforted by the per- 
manent glory of the thing he sees. 

The distant and high range that bounds his 
view makes a sort of wall, cutting the country 
off and guarding it from whatever may be 
beyond. The succession of lower ranges sug- 
gests secluded valleys, and the reiterated woods^ 
distant and more distant, convey an impression 
of fertility more powerful than that of corn in 
harvest upon the lowlands. 
235 



THE VALLEY 

Sometimes it is a whole province that is thus 
grasped by the eye; sometimes in the summer 
haze of Northern lands, a few miles only ; al- 
ways this scenery inspires the onlooker with a 
sense of completion and of repose, and at the 
same time, I think, with worship and with 
awe. 

Now one such group of valleys there was, 
hill above hill, forest above forest, and beyond 
it a great, noble range, unwooded and high 
against Heaven, guarding all the place, which 
I for my part knew from the day when first 
I came to know anything of this world. There 
is a high place under fir trees ; a place of 
sand and bracken in South England, whence 
such a view was always present to my eye 
in childhood, and " There," said I to myself 
(even in childhood) " a man should make his 
habitation. In those valleys is the proper 
settling place for a man." 

And so there was. There was a steading for 
me in the midst of those hills. 

It was a little place which had grown up 
236 



THE VALLEY 

as my county grows, the house throwing out 
arms and layers, and making itself over ten 
generations of men. One room was panelled 
in the oak of the seventeenth century — but that 
had been a novelty in its time, for the walls 
upon which the panels stood were of the late 
fifteenth, oak and brick intermingled. Another 
room was large and light, built in the manner 
of one hundred and fifty years ago, which 
people call Georgian. 

It had been thrown out South — and this 
is quite against our custom ; for our older 
houses looked east and west to take all the 
sun and to present a corner to the south-west 
and the storms. So they stand still. 

It had round it a solid cornice which the 
modem men of the towns would have called 
ugly, but there was ancestry in it. Then, 
further on this house had modern roominess 
stretching in one new wing after another; 
and it had a great set of byres and barns, 
and there was a copse and some six acres of 
land. Over a deep gully stood over against 
237 



THE VALLEY 

it the little town that was the mother of the 
place; and altogether this good place was en- 
closed, silent, and secure. 

" The fish that misses the hook regrets the 
worm." If this is not a Chinese proverb it 
ought to be. That little farm and steading 
and those six acres, that ravine, those trees, 
that aspect of the little mothering town; the 
wooded hills fold above fold, the noble range 
beyond — all these were not, and for ever will 
not be mine. 

For all I know some man quite unacquainted 
with that land took the place, grumbling, for 
a debt; or again, for all I know it may have 
been bought by a blind man who could not 
see the hills, or by some man who, seeing them 
perpetually, regretted the flat marshes of his 
home. To-day, this very day, up high on 
Egdean Side, not thinking of such things, 
through a gap in the trees, I saw again after 
so many years, set one behind the other, the 
woods, wave upon wave, the summer heat, the 
high, bare range guarding all ; and in the midst 
238 



THE VALLEY 

of that landscape, set like a toy, the little Sabine 
farm. 

Then, said I, to this place I might not 
know, " Continue. Go and serve whom you 
will. You were not altogether mine because 
you would not be, and to-day you are not 
mine at all. You will regret it perhaps, and 
perhaps you will not. There was verse in you 
perhaps, or prose, or, much better still (for 
all I know), contentment for a man. But you 
refused. You lost your chance. Good-by," 
and with that I went on into the wood 
and beyond the gap and saw the sight no 
more. 

It was ten years since I had seen it last, 
the little Sabine farm. It may be ten years 
before I see it again, or it may be for ever. 
But as I went through the woods saying to 
myself : 

" You lost your chance, my little Sabine 
farm, you lost your chance ! " another part 
of me at once replied : 

" Ah, and so did you ! " 
239 



THE VALLEY 

Then, by way of riposte, I answered in my 
mind: 

" Not at all, for the chance I never had ; 
all I have lost is my desire — no more." 

" No, not only your desire," said the voice 
to me within, " but the fulfilment of it." And 
when that reply came I naturally turned, as 
all men do on hearing such interior replies, to 
a general consideration of regret, and was pre- 
pared, if any honest publisher should have 
come whistling through that wood, with an 
offer proper to the occasion to produce no less 
than five volumes on the Nature of Regret, its 
mortal sting, its bitter-sweetness, its power to 
keep alive in man the pure passions of the 
soul, its hint at immortality, its memory of 
Heaven. 

But the wood was empty. The offer did not 
come. The moment was lost. The five vol- 
umes will hardly now be written. In place of 
them I offer poor this, which you may take or 
leave. But I beg leave, before I end, to cite 
certain words very nobly attached to that great 
240 



THE VALLEY 

inn, The Griffin, which has its foundation set 
far off in another place, in the town of March, 
in the sad Fen-Land near the Eastern Sea : 

" England my desire, what have you not re- 
fused? " 



£41 



XXIX 

A CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

The other day — indeed some months ago — I 
was in the company of two men who were talk- 
ing together and were at cross-purposes. The 
one was an Englishman acquainted with the 
Catalonian tongue and rather proud of knowing 
it ; the other was a citizen of the Republic of 
Andorra. 

The first had the advantage of his fellow in 
world-wide travel, the reading of many news- 
papers and (beside his thorough knowledge of 
Catalonian) a smattering of French, German, 
and American. 

I was touched to see the care and deference 
and good-fellowship which the superior ex- 
tended to the inferior in this colloquy. 

I did not hear the beginning of it: it was 
the early middle part which I came in for ; it 
was conducted loudly and with gestures upon 
242 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

the part of the Andorran, good-humouredly but 
equally openly on the part of the Englishman, 
who said : 

*' I grant you that life is very hard for some 
of our town dwellers in spite of the high wages 
they obtain." 

To which the Andorran answered : " There 
is nothing to grant, your Grace, for I would 
not believe their life was hard; but I was 
puzzled by what you told me, for I could not 
make out how they earned so much money, and 
yet looked so extraordinary." The Andor- 
ran showed by this that he had visited Eng- 
land. 

At this the Englishman smiled pleasantly 
enough and said : " Do you think me extraor- 
dinary ? " 

The Andorran was a little embarrassed. 
" No no," he said, " you do not understand 
the word I use. I do not mean extraordi- 
nary to see, I mean unhappy and lacking hu- 
manity." 

The Englishman smiled more genially still 
243 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

in his good wholesome beard, and said : " Do 
I look to you like that ? " 

" No," said the Andorran gravely, " nor 
does that gentleman whom you pointed out 
to me when we left France, your English 
patron, Mr. Bernstein I think . . . you were 
both well-fed and well-clothed . . . and what 
is more, I know nothing of what you earn. 
But in Andorra we ask about this man and 
that man indifferently, and especially about 
the poorest, and when I asked you about the 
poorest in your towns you told me that there 
was not one of them who did not earn, when 
he was fully working, twenty-five pesetas a 
week. Now with twenty-five pesetas a week ! 
Oh ... ! Why, I could live on five, and five 
weeks of twenty saved is a hundred pesetas ; and 
with a hundred pesetas . . . ! Oh, one can buy 
a great brood sow ; or if one is minded for 
grandeur, the best coat in the world; or again, 
a little mule just foaled, which in two years, 
mind you, in two years " (and here he wagged 
his finger) "will be a great fine beast" (and 
^44! 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

here he extended his arms ) , " and the next year 
will carry a man over the hills and will sell for 
five hundred pesetas. Yes it will ! " 

The Englishman looked puzzled. " Well," 
said he, leaning forward, ticking off on his 
fingers and becoming practical, " there's your 
pound a week." 

The Andorran nodded. He began ticking 
it off on his fingers also. 

" Now of course the man is not always in 
work." 

" If he is lazy," said the Andorran with 
angry eyes, " the neighbours shall see to that ! " 

" No," said the Englishman, irritated, " you 
don't understand ; he can't always find some 
one to give him work." 

" But who gives work.? " said the Andorran. 
" Work is not given." And then he laughed. 
" Our trouble is to get the youngsters to do 
it ! " And he laughed more loudly. 

" You don't understand," repeated the Eng- 
lishman, pestered, " he can't work unless some 
one allows him to work for him." 
245 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

" Pooh ! " said the Andorran, " he could cut 
down trees or dig, or get up into the hills." 

" Why," said the Englishman with wonder- 
ing eyes, " the perlice would have him then." 

The Andorran looked mournful : he had heard 
the name of something dangerous in this coun- 
try. He thought it was a ghost that haunted 
lonely places and strangled men. 

" Well then," went on the Englishman in a 
practical fashion, again ticking on his fingers, 
" let us say he can work three weeks out of the 
five." 

" Yes ? " said the Andorran, bewildered. 

" He gets, let us say, three times a week's 
wage in the five weeks. ... I don't mind, call 
it an average of twenty pesetas if you like, or 
even eighteen." 

" What is an ' average ' ? " said the Andor- 
ran, frowning. 

" An average," said the Englishman impa- 
tiently, " oh, an average is what he gets all 
lumped up." 

" Do you mean," said the Andorran gravely, 
246 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

" that he gets eighteen pesetas every Satur- 
day? " 

" No, no, NO ! " struck in the Englishman. 
" Twenty-five pesetas, as you call them, when he 
can get work, and nothing when he can't." 

" Good Lord ! " said the Andorran, with wide 
eyes and crossing himself. " How does the 
poor fellow know whether perlice will not be at 
him again.'' It is enough to break a man's 
heart ! " 

" Well, don't argue! " said the Englishman, 
keen upon his tale. " He gets an average, any- 
how, of eighteen pesetas, as you call them, a 
week. Now you see, however wretched he is, 
five of those will go in rent, and if he is a decent 
man, seven." 

The Andorran was utterly at sea. " But if 
he is wretched, why should he pay, and if he is 
decent why should he pay still more ? " he asked. 

" Why, damn it all ! " said the Englishman, 
exploding, " a man must live ! " 

" Precisely," said the Andorran rigidly, 
**that is why I am asking the question. He 
247 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

pays this tax, you say, five pesetas, if he is 
wretched and seven if he is decent. But a man 
may be decent although he is wretched, and who 
is so brutal as to ask a tax of the poor ? " 

" It isn't a tax," said the Englishman. " He 
pays it for his house." 

" But a man could buy a house," said the 
Andorran, " with a few payments like that." 

The Englishman sighed. " Do listen to 
my explanation. He's got to pay it any- 
how." 

" Well," said the Andorran, sighing in his 
turn, " you must have a wicked King. But, 
please God, he cannot spend it all on his pleas- 
ures." 

" It isn't paid to the King, God bless him," 
said the Englishman. " The man pays it to his 
landlord." 

" And suppose he doesn't.? " said the Andor- 
ran defiantly. 

" Well, the perlice," began the Englishman, 
and the Andorran's face showed that he was 
afraid of occult powers. 
248 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

" So there, you see," went on the English- 
man, calculating along with rapid content, 
" he's only got thirteen." 

The Andorran was willing to stretch a point. 
" Well," said he doubtfully, " I will grant him 
thirteen, and with thirteen pesetas a man can 
do well enough. His wife milks, and it does 
not cost much to put a little cotton on the child, 
and then, of course, if he is too poor to buy a 
bed, why there is his straw." 

" Straw's not decent, and we don't allow it," 
said the Englishman firmly ; " he doesn't buy a 
bed always; sometimes he rents it." 

" I don't understand," said the Andorran, 
" I don't understand." 

There was a little pause during which neither 
of the two men looked at the other. The Eng- 
lishman went on good-naturedly and laboriously 
explaining : 

" Now let's come to bread." 

" Yes," said the Andorran eagerly, " man 
lives by bread and wine." 

" Well," said the Englishman, ignoring this 
249 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

interruption, " you see, bread for the lot of 
them would come to half that money." 

" Yes," said the Andorran, nodding, " you 
are quite right. Bread is a very serious thing." 
And he sighed. 

" Half of it," continued the Englishman, 
" goes in bread. And then, of course, he has 
to get a little meat." 

" Certainly," said the Andorran. 

" Bacon anyhow," the Englishman went on, 
" and there's boots." 

" Oh, he could do without boots," said the 
Andorran. 

" No he can't," said the Englishman, " they 
all have to have boots ; and then you see, there's 
tea." 

The Andorran was interested in hearing about 
tea. " You Englishmen are so fond of tea," 
he said, smiling. " I have noticed that you ask 
for tea. Juan has tea to sell." 

The Englishman nodded genially. " I will 
buy some of him," he said. 

" Well, go on," said the Andorran. 
250 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

" And there's a little baccy, of course " — ■ 
and he gave the prices of both those articles. 
" They're a leetle more than you might think," 
continued the Englishman, a little confused. 
" They're taxed, you see." 

" Taxed again ? " said the Andorran. 

" Yes," said the Englishman rapidly, " not 
much; besides which, I haven't said anything 
was taxed yet: they pay about double on their 
tea and about four times on the value of the to- 
bacco. But they don't feel it. Oh, if they get 
regular work they're all right ! " 

" Then," said the Andorran, summing it all 
up, " they ought to do very well." 

" Yes, they ought," said the Englishman, 
" but somehow they're not steady of themselves : 
they get pauperised." 

" What is that.? " said the Andorran. 

*' Why, they get to expect things for 
nothing." 

" They think," said the Andorran cheerfully, 
" that good things fall from the sky. I know 
that sort: we have them." He thought he had 
251 



CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 

begun to understand, and just after he had 
said this we came to a village. 

I must here tell you what I ought to have put 
at the beginning of these few lines, that I heard 
this conversation in Andorra valley itself, while 
four of us, the Andorran guide, the Englishman, 
myself and an Ironist were proceeding through 
the mountains, riding upon mules. 

We had come to the village of Encamps, and 
there we all got down to enter the inn. We had 
a meal together and paid, the four of us, ex- 
actly five shillings and threepence all together 
for wine and bread, cooked meat, plenty of 
vegetables, coffee, liqueurs and a cigar. 

This was the end of the conversation in An- 
dorra : it was my business to return to England 
after the holiday to write an essay on a point 
in political economy, to which I did justice; but 
the conventions of academic writing prevented 
me from quoting in that essay this remarkable 
experience. 



252 



XXX 

PARIS AND THE EAST 

One of the things that set a modern man won- 
dering is the nature of the survivor of our 
time. 

It is customary to say that all human things 
decay and end ; and if you will take a period 
long enough of course it is true, for at last the 
world itself shall dissolve. But when men point 
to dead Empires, as Egypt or Assyria are dead, 
or when they point to a fossilised civilisation, 
as it seems, according to travellers, that certain 
civilisations of the East are fossilised, or when 
they point to little broken cities where once 
were famous towns, one is tempted to remem- 
ber that to all these there is an exceptional 
glorious sort which is ourselves. Atlantic Eu- 
rope, the Europe that was made by the Chris- 
tian Faith and in the first four centuries of our 
253 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

era, lives on from change to change in a most 
marvellous way, and for now two thousand years 
has not seemed capable of decline. You have in 
the history of it resurrection after resurrection, 
and through all those rapid and fantastic de- 
velopments, transformations far more rapid and 
far more fantastic than any other of which we 
have record, a sort of inner fixity of type re- 
mains, like the individual soul of the man which 
makes him always himself in spite of accident 
and in spite of the process of age ; only, Europe 
differs from such metaphor in this, that it is 
like some man not subject, it would seem, to 
mortality. 

This thought to which I perpetually return, 
occurred to me as I handled a book on Paris, 
the illustrations of which were impressions gath- 
ered by a Japanese artist. Such a contrast will 
call up in the minds of many the contrast be- 
tween something very old and something very 
new. A reader might say as he glanced at this 
book : " Here is one of the most ancient things 
we have, the Oriental mind, and it is looking at 
254 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

one of the freshest and most modern things we 
have, modern Paris." 

I confess that to me the contrast is of an- 
other kind. I should say : " Here is something 
which is, so far as its inner force goes, im- 
movable, the Oriental mind; and this is how it 
looks at the most mobile thing on earth, the 
heart of Gaul — yet the mobile thing has a his- 
tory almost as long as, and far more full than, 
the immobile thing." 

Upon a central page of this book I found a 
really splendid bit of drawing. It is an im- 
pression of the Statue of the Republic under 
a cold dawn. Now when one thinks what that 
statue means, what portion of the stoical philos- 
ophy re-arisen after so many centuries it em- 
bodies, what furious combats have raged round 
that idea : I mean combats, not debates : pain, 
not rhetoric; men dying in great numbers and 
desiring to kill others as they died. When one 
considers that statue but the other day, with 
the raging mob of workmen round it, and when 
one suddenly remembers that the whole thing is 
255 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

after all only of the last hundred years — what a 
multiplicity of life this chief of our European 
cities possesses in one's eyes ! 

The admirable pictures in this book are 
drawn as nearly in the European manner as 
one could expect, but the feeling is an un- 
changing feeling which we know in Eastern 
things. The mind is like deep and level water, 
never stirred by wind: a big lake in a crater 
of the hills. But the thing drawn is as moving 
and as living as the air. 

I wonder whether this artist, as he stood 
and drew, felt as a European feels when he 
stands and draws in any one of our immemorial 
sites : by the Pool of London, or at the top of 
the rue St. Jacques, or in the place of the Mar- 
tyrdom at Toulouse, or looking at the most an- 
cient yellow dusts of Toledo from over the 
tumbling strength of the Tagus.'^ He may 
have felt it . . . perhaps . . . for all his work, 
even the little introduction that he has written 
shows that astonishing adaptability and exceed- 
ingly rapid intelligence which are the marks of 
256 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

the Japanese to-day. But if he felt it he must 
have felt it by education. For us it is in our 
blood. We stand upon those sites and we feel 
ourself in and part of a stream of life that 
seems almost incapable of ending. And that 
brings me back to where I began, How much 
longer will our civilisation endure.'' 

Will it end.? It has many enemies, most of 
them unconscious, has modem Europe. 

It has men within it who imagine that the 
correction of some large abuse and the with- 
drawal of some considerable part of its fabric 
in the correction of that abuse, is a matter con- 
cerning only their one generation. These men 
visibly put in peril the balance of that civilisa- 
tion by their very enthusiasm. 

It has a lesser number of other enemies within 
itself; enemies more dangerous, who do believe 
that some quite new thing wholly alien to the 
soul of Europe can be imposed upon that soul. 
These men are always for anarchy ; they delight 
in emphasising all that seems to diminish the 
responsibility and the freedom of citizens, and 
257 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

it is their pleasure to accelerate every tendency 
which may destroy, from whatever side, our per- 
manent solution of domestic and of natural 
things : families, properties, armies. 

The common faith which was, as it were, the 
cement of our civilisation has been hit so hard 
that some do ask themselves openly the ques- 
tion that was only whispered some little time 
ago — whether the cement still holds. It is quite 
certain that if that last symbol and reality dis- 
integrates, if the Catholic Church leaves it, 
Europe has come to an end. 

But these questions are not yet to be met 
by any reply. And when I ask myself those 
questions, and I always do when I see the Seine 
going by the walls that were Caesar's parleying 
ground with the chiefs, Dionysius's prison, Ju- 
lian's office, Dagobert's palace, and which have 
been subject to everything from Charlemagne 
to the Bourbons, and which have (within the 
memory of men whom I myself have known) 
ended the Monarchy and seen passing by a 
wholly new society — when I ask myself those 
258 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

questions, I answer less and less with, every 
year. 

Time was, in the University, say twenty years 
ago, one would have said : " It is all over. 
Everything that can destroy us has triumphed." 
Time was, say ten years ago, in the heat of a 
particular struggle which raged all over the 
West, one could have said with the enthusiasm of 
the fight, that continuity would win. But to- 
day, whether because one has accumulated 
knowledge or because things are really more 
confused, it is difficult to reply. 

A man with our knowledge and our experi- 
ence of what Europe has been and is, standing 
in the grey and decayed Roman city of the Fifth 
Century, and watching the little barbarian troop 
riding into Lutetia, might have said that a 
gradual darkness would swallow us all, especially 
since he knew that just beyond the narrow seas 
in Eastern Britain a dense pall then covered the 
corpse of the Roman civilisation. 

A man working on the Tour St. Jacques, the 
259 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

last of the Gothic, might have seen nothing but 
anarchy and the end of all good work in the 
change that was surging round him : the Hugue- 
nots, the new Splendour, the cruelty and the 
making of lies. 

Certainly those who were present in Paris be- 
fore the 10th of August, '92, thought an end 
had come, and believed the Revolution to be a 
most unfruitful and tempestuous death ; imagin- 
ing Europe to have no hope but in the possible 
extinction of the flame. 

All three judgments would have been wrong. 
And when one takes that typical Paris again, 
and handles it and looks at it and thinks of it 
as the example and the symbol of all our time; 
just as one is beginning to say " The thing is 
dying," the memory of similar deaths that were 
not deaths in the past returns to one and one 
must be silent. 

Never was Europe less conscious of herself, 

never did she more freely admit the forces that 

destroy, than she admits them to-day. Never 

was evil more insolently or more glaringly in 

260 



PARIS AND THE EAST 

power; never had it less fear of chastisement 
than in the whirlwind of our time. If that 
whirlwind is mechanical, and if this vast an- 
archic commerce, these blaring papers, these 
sudden fortunes, these frequent and unparalleled 
huge wars, are the breaking up of all that once 
made Europe, then the answer to the question 
is plain : but it may be that these are things not 
mechanical but organic : seeds surviving in the 
ruin which will grow up into living forms. We 
shall see. 



261 



XXXI 

THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

It is curious that the Scientific Spirit has never 
tabulated any research, even superficial, upon 
the human type of charlatan. 

It is the essence of a charlatan that he aims 
at the results of certain excellences in the full 
consciousness that he does not possess those 
excellences. The material upon which he works 
is twofold : the ignorance and the noble appetite 
for reverence in his fellow men. 

Where animals are concerned the Scientific 
Spirit has tabulated a good deal of careful re- 
search in this department. We know fairly 
well the habits of the Cuckoo. What seemingly 
harmless organisms are poisonous to us, and 
why, we have discovered and can catalogue. 
The successful deception practised for purposes 
of secrecy or greed by such and such a creature, 
26a 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

we can discover in our books. But no one has 
tabulated the human charlatan. 

An admirable example upon which one can 
test the whole theory of charlatanism is the 
ridiculous Lombroso. 

To begin with you have the name. He was 
no more of an Italian than Disraeli, or than 
the present Mayor of Rome: but his Italian 
name deceives and is intended to deceive, not 
necessarily that it was assumed, but that it 
was paraded as national. Hundreds of honest 
men thought themselves praising the Italian 
character and Italian civilisation when the news- 
papers (themselves half duped) had persuaded 
them to blow the trumpet of Lombroso. 

One of the characteristics of the charlatan is 
that he parades the object with which he desires 
to dupe you, and simultaneously hides his 
methods in pushing the thing forward. The 
purveyor of cheap jewellery in Whitechapel 
does this. He lets you have the glitter of his 
article full and strong. Where he got it, of his 
own connection with it, and what it is, you learn 
263 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

last in the business or not at all. The whole 
process is one of suggestion, or, as our fore- 
fathers called it, " hoodwinking." Lombroso 
was true to type in this regard. 

The European Press was deluged one day 
with notices, praise, reviews of a book which 
was called Degeneration. It was a tenth-rate 
book, but we were compelled to hear of it. No 
words were fine enough to describe its author. 
We learnt that his name was Nordau. There 
was no process of logic in the book, there was 
no labour. Where it asserted (it was a mass 
of assertions) it usually trespassed on ground 
which the author could not pretend to any 
familiarity with. Those who are already alive 
to the international trick were suspicious and 
upon their guard from the very moment that 
they smelt the thing. The infinitely larger 
number who do not understand the nature of in- 
ternational forces were taken in. For one man 
who read the farrago a hundred were taught to 
magnify the name of Nordau. Only when this 
process of suggestion had well sunk in did the 
^64 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

public casually learn that the said Nordau was 
a connection of Lombroso's. 

A book of greater value (which is not saying 
much) proceeded from the pen of one Ferrero. 
It proposed an examination of the Roman Em- 
pire and the Roman people. Its thesis was, of 
course, a degradation of both. For one man 
who so much as saw that book, a hundred went 
away with the vague impression that a certain 
great Ferrero dominated European thought. 
He gave opinions (among other things) upon 
the polity of England so absurd and ignorant 
that, had the process of suggestion not run on 
before, those opinions would only have attained 
some small measure of notoriety from their very 
fatuousness. But the international trick had 
reversed the common and healthy process of hu- 
man thought. We were not allowed to judge 
the man by his work ; no, we must accept the 
work on the authority of the man ; only after the 
trick had been successfully worked did it come 
out that Ferrero was a connection of Lom- 
broso's. 

265 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

Lombroso's own department of charlatanry 
was to attack Christian morals in the shape 
of denying man's power of choice between good 
and evil. 

In another epoch and with other human ma- 
terial to work upon his stock-in-trade would 
have taken some other form, but Lombroso had 
been born into that generation immediately pre- 
ceding our own, whose chief intellectual vice was 
materialism. A name could be cheaply made 
upon the lines of materialism, and Lombroso 
took to it as naturally as his spiritual forerun- 
ners took to rationalist Deism and as his spirit- 
ual descendants will take to spurious mysticism. 
We shall have in the near future our Lombrosos 
of the Turning Table, the Rapping Devil, and 
the Manifesting Dead Great Aunt — indeed this 
development coincided with his own old age — 
but as things were, the easiest charlantry in his 
years of vigour was to be pursued upon Ma- 
terialist lines, and on Materialist lines did the 
worthy Lombroso proceed. His method was 
childishly simple, and we ought to blush for our 
266 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

time or rather for that of our immediate seniors 
that it should have duped anybody — ^but it was 
far from childishly guileless. 

When the laws are chiefly concerned in 
defending the possessions of those already 
wealthy, and when society, in the decline or 
depression of religion, takes to the worshipping 
of wealth, those whom the laws will punish are 
generally poor. Such a time was that into 
which Lombroso was born. No man was ex- 
ecuted for treason, few men were imprisoned for 
it. Cheating on a large scale was an avenue to 
social advancement in most of the progressive 
European countries. The purveying of false 
news was a way to fortune: the forestaller and 
the briber were masters of the Senate. The 
sword was sheathed. The popular instinct 
which would repress and punish cowardice, op- 
pression, the sexual abominations of the rich, 
and their cruelties, had no outlet for its ex- 
pression. The prisons of Europe were filled in 
the main with the least responsible, the weakest 
willed, and the most unfortunate of the very 
267 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

poor. We owe to Lombroso the epoch-making 
discovery that the weakest willed, the least re- 
sponsible, and the most unfortunate of the very 
poor often suffer from physical degradation. 
With such an intellectual equipment Lombroso 
erected the majestic structure of human irre- 
sponsibility. 

Two hundred men and women are arrested 
for picking pockets in such and such a district 
in the course of a year. The contempt for 
human dignity which is characteristic of mod- 
em injustice permits these poor devils to be 
treated like so many animals, to be thrashed, tor- 
tured, caged, and stripped : measured, recorded, 
dealt with as vile bodies for experiment. Lom- 
broso (or for that matter any one possessed of 
a glimmering of human reason) can see that of 
these two hundred unfortunate wretches, a 
larger proportion will be diseased or malformed, 
than would be the case among two hundred 
taken at random among the better fed or better 
housed and more carefully nurtured citizens. 
The Charlatan is in clover! He gathers his 
268 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

statistics : twenty-three per cent, squint, eighteen 
per cent, have lice — what is really conclusive 
no less than ninety-three per cent, suffer from 
metagrobolisation of the hyperdromedaries, 
which is scientist Greek for the consequences of 
not having enough to eat. It does not take 
much knowledge of men and things to see what 
the Charlatan can make of such statistics. Lom- 
broso pumps the method dry and then produces 
a theory uncommonly comfortable to the well- 
to-do — that their fellow-men if unfortunate can 
be treated as irresponsible chattels. 

There is the beginning and end of the whole 
humbug. 

With the characteristic lack of reason which 
is at once the weakness and the strength of this 
vicious clap-trap, a totally disconnected — and 
equally obvious — series of facts is dragged in. 
If men drink too much, or if they have in- 
herited insanity, or are in any other way af- 
flicted, by their own fault or that of others, in 
the action of the will, they will be prone to ir- 
responsibilities and to follies ; and where such 
269 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

irresponsibilities and follies endanger the com- 
fort of the well-to-do, the forces of modem so- 
ciety will be used to restrain them. Their acts 
of violence or of unrestrained cupidity being 
unaccompanied by calculation will lead to the 
lock-up. And so you have another stream of 
statistics showing that " alcoholism " (which is 
Scientist for drinking too much) and epilepsy 
and lunacy do not make for material success. 

On these two disparate legs poses the rickety 
structure which has probably already done its 
worst in European jurisprudence and against 
which the common sense of society is already 
reacting. 

Fortunately for men Charlatanry of that 
calibre has no very permanent effect. It is 
too silly and too easily found out. If Lombroso 
had for one moment intended a complete theory 
of Materialist morals or had for one moment be- 
lieved in the stuff which he used for self-adver- 
tisement, he would have told us how physically 
to distinguish the cosmopolitan and treasonable 
financier, the fraudulent company-worker, the 
270 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

traitor, the tyrant, the pomographer, and the 
coward. These in high places are the curse of 
modern Europe — not the most wretched of the 
very poor. Of course Lombroso could tell us 
nothing of the sort ; for there is nothing to tell. 

Incidentally it is worthy of remark that this 
man was one of those charlatans who are found 
out in time. Common sense revolted and in re- 
volting managed to expose its enemy very ef- 
fectively while that enemy was still alive. A 
hundred tricks were played upon the fellow: it 
is sufficient to quote two. 

After a peculiarly repulsive trial for murder 
in Paris, a wag sent the photograph of two 
hands, a right hand and a left hand, to the great 
criminologist, telling him they were those of the 
murderer, and asking for his opinion. He re- 
plied in a document crammed with the pompous 
terms of the scientific cheap- jack, hybrid Greek 
and Latin, and barbarous in the extreme. He 
discovered malformations in the fingers and 
twenty other mysteries of his craft, which ex- 
actly proved why these hands were necessarily 
271 



THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 

and by the predestination of blind Nature the 
hands of a murderer. Then it was that the wag 
pubhshed his letter and the reply with the grave 
annotation that the left hand was his own (he 
was a man of letters) and the right hand that of 
an honest fellow who washed down his carriage. 

The other anecdote is as follows: Lombroso 
produced a piece of fatuous nonsense about the 
Political Criminal Woman. He based it upon 
" the skull of Charlotte Corday " — which skull 
he duly analysed, measured, and labelled with 
the usual regiment of long and incomprehensible 
words. Upon the first examination of the evi- 
dence it turned out that the skull was no more 
Charlotte Corday's than Queen Anne's — a med- 
ical student had sold it to a humble Curiosity 
Shop, and the dealer, who seems to have had 
some intellectual affinity with the Lombroso 
tribe, had labelled it for purposes of sale, " The 
Skull of Charlotte Corday." Lombroso swal- 
lowed it. 

The Ass ! 



272 



XXXII 

THE BARBARIANS 

The use of analogy, which is so wise and 
necessary a thing in historical judgment, has a 
knack of slipping into the falsest forms. 

When ancient civilisation broke down its 
breakdown was accompanied by the infiltration 
of barbaric auxiliaries into the Roman armies, 
by the settlement of Barbarians (probably in 
small numbers), upon Roman land, and, in some 
provinces, by devastating, though not usually 
permanent, irruptions of barbaric hordes. 

The presence of these foreign elements, 
coupled with the gradual loss of so many arts, 
led men to speak of " the Barbarian invasions " 
as though these were a principal cause of what 
was in reality no more than the old age and 
fatigue of an antique society. 

Upon the model of this conception men, 
watching the dissolution of our own civilisation 
273 



THE BARBARIANS 

to-day, or at least its corruption, have asked 
themselves whence those Barbarians would come 
that should complete its final ruin. The first, 
the least scholarly and the most obvious idea was 
that of the swamping of Europe by the East. 
It was a conception which required no learning, 
nor even any humour. It was widely adopted 
and it was ridiculous. Others, with somewhat 
more grasp of reality, coined the phrase " that 
the barbarians which should destroy the civili- 
sation of Europe were already breeding under 
the terrible conditions of our great cities." 
This guess contained, indeed, a half-truth, for 
though the degradation of human life in the 
great industrial cities of England and the 
United States was not a cause of our decline it 
was very certainly a symptom of it. Moreover, 
industrial society, notably in this country and 
in Germany, while increasing rapidly in num- 
bers, is breeding steadily from the worst and 
most degraded types. 

But the truth is that no such mechanical ex- 
planation will suffice to set forth the causes of a 
274 



THE BARBARIANS 

civilisation's decay. Before the barbarian in 
any form can appear in it, it must already have 
weakened. If it cannot absorb or reject an 
alien element it is because its organism has 
grown enfeebled, and its powers of digestion 
and excretion are lost or deteriorated ; and who- 
ever would restore any society which menaces 
to fall, must busy himself about the inward na- 
ture of that society much more than about its 
external dangers or the merely mechanical and 
numerical factors of peril to be discovered 
within it. 

Whenever we look for " the barbarian," 
whether in the decline of our own society or 
that of some past one whose historical fate we 
may be studying, we are looking rather for a 
visible effect of disease than for its source. 

None the less to mark those visible effects 
is instructive, and without some conspectus of 
them it will be impossible to diagnose the disease. 
A modern man may, therefore, well ask where 
the barbarians are that shall enter into our in- 
heritance, or whose triumphs shall, if it be per- 
275 



THE BARBARIANS 

mitted, at least accompany, even if they cannot 
effect, the destruction of Christendom. 

With that word " Christendom " a chief part 
of the curious speculation is at once suggested. 
Whether the scholar hates or loves, rejects or 
adopts, ridicules or admires, the religious creed 
of Europe, he must, in any case, recognise two 
prime historical truths. The first is that that 
creed which we call the Christian religion was 
the soul and meaning of European civilisation 
during the period of its active and united ex- 
istence. The second is that wherever the re- 
ligion characteristic of a people has failed to 
react against its own decay and has in some 
last catastrophe perished, then that people has 
lost soon after its corporate existence. 

So much has passion taken the place of rea- 
son in matters of scholarship that plain truths 
of this kind, to which all history bears witness, 
are accepted or rejected rather by the appetite 
of the reader than by his rational recognition 
of them, or his rational disagreement. If we will 
forget for a moment what we may desire in the 
276 



THE BARBARIANS 

matter and merely consider what we know, we 
shall without hesitation admit both the proposi- 
tions I have laid down. Christendom was Chris- 
tian, not by accident or superficially, but in a 
formative connection, just as an Englishman is 
English or as a poem is informed by a definite 
scheme of rhythm. It is equally true that a 
sign and probably a cause of a society's end is 
the dissolution of that causative moral thing, its 
philosophy or creed. 

Now here we discover the first mark of the 
Barbarian. 

Note that in the peril of English society to- 
day there is no positive alternative to the an- 
cient philosophic tradition of Christian Europe. 
It has to meet nothing more substantive than a 
series of negations, often contradictory, but 
all allied in their repugnance to a fixed certitude 
in morals. 

So far has this process gone that to be writ- 
ing as I am here in public, not even defending 
the creed of Christendom, but postulating its 
historic place, and pointing out that the con- 
277 



THE BARBARIANS 

siderable attack now carried on against it is 
symptomatic of the dissolution of our so- 
ciety, has about it something temerarious and 
odd. 

Next look at secondary effects and consider 
how certain root institutions native to the long 
development of Europe and to her individuality 
are the subject of attack and note the nature of 
the attack. 

A fool will maintain that change, which Is 
the law of life, can be presented merely as a 
matter of degree, and that, because our institu- 
tions have always been subject to change, there- 
fore their very disappearance can proceed with- 
out the loss of all that has in the past been our- 
selves. 

But an argument of this sort has no weight 
with the serious observer. It is certain that if 
the fundamental institutions of a polity are 
no longer regarded as fundamental by its citi- 
zens, that polity is about to pass through the 
total change which in a living organism we 
call death. 

278 



THE BARBARIANS 

Now the modem attack upon property and 
upon marriage (to take but two fundamental in- 
stitutions of the European) is precisely of this 
nature. Our peril is not that certain men at- 
tack the one or the other and deny their moral 
right to exist. Our peril rather is that, quite 
as much as those who attack, those who defend 
seem to take for granted the relativeness, the 
artificiality, the non-fundamental character of 
the institution which they are apparently con- 
cerned to support. 

See how marriage is defended. To those who 
would destroy it under the plea of its incon- 
veniences and tragedies, the answer is no longer 
made that, good or ill, it is an absolute and is 
intangible. The answer made is that it is con- 
venient, or useful, or necessary, or merely tradi- 
tional. 

Most significant of all, the terminology of 
the attack is on the lips of the defence, but the 
contrary is never the case. Those opponents 
of marriage who abound in modern England 
will never use the term " a sacrament," yet how 
279 



THE BARBARIANS 

many for whom marriage is still a sacrament 
will forego the pseudo-scientific jargon of their 
opponents ? 

The threat against property is upon the 
same lines. That property should be restored 
that most citizens should enjoy it, that it is 
normal to the European family in its healthy 
state — all this we hear less and less. More and 
more do we hear it defended, however morbid in 
form or unjust in use, as a necessity, a trick 
which secures a greater stability for the State 
or a mere power which threatens and will break 
its opponents tyrannously. 

The spirit is abroad in many another minor 
matter. In its most grotesque form it chal- 
lenges the accuracy of mathematics : in its most 
vicious, the clear processes of the human rea- 
son. The Barbarian is as proud as a savage in 
a top hat when he talks of the elliptical or the 
hyperbolic universe and tries to picture parallel 
straight lines converging or diverging — ^but 
never doing anything so vulgarly old-fashioned 
as to remain parallel. 

280 



THE BARBARIANS 

The Barbarian when he has graduated to be 
a " pragmatist," struts like a nigger in evening 
clothes, and believes himself superior to the 
gift of reason, or free to maintain that defini- 
tion, limit, quantity and contradiction are little 
childish things which he has outgrown. 

The Barbarian is very certain that the exact 
reproduction in line or colour of a thing seen is 
beneath him, and that a drunken blur for line, a 
green sky, a red tree and a purple cow for 
colour, are the mark of great painting. 

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very 
mark of him — that he can have his cake and 
eat it too. He will consume what civilisation 
has slowly produced after generations of selec- 
tion and effort but he will not be at the pains 
to replace such goods nor indeed has he a com- 
prehension of the virtue that has brought them 
into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, 
on which account he is for ever marvelling that 
civilisation should have offended him with priests 
and soldiers. 

The Barbarian wonders what strange mean- 
281 



THE BARBARIANS 

ing may lurk In that ancient and solemn truth, 
" Sine Auctoritate nulla vita." 

In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable 
everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he 
can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sus- 
tain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or 
peril of every civilisation exactly that has been 
true. 

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tol- 
erate him ; in the long stretches of peace we are 
not afraid. 

We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic 
inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed 
creeds refreshes us : we laugh. But as we laugh 
we are watched by large and awful faces from 
beyond : and on these faces there is no smile. 

We permit our jaded intellects to play with 
drugs of novelty for the fresh sensation they 
arouse, though we know well there is no good in 
them, but only wasting at the last. 

Yet there is one real interest in watching the 
Barbarian and one that is profitable. 

The real interest of watching the Barbarian 
282 



THE BARBARIANS 

is not the amusement derivable from his antics, 
but the prime doubt whether he will succeed or 
no, whether he will flourish. He is, I repeat, 
not an agent, but merely a symptom, yet he 
should be watched as a symptom. It is not he 
in his impotence that can discover the power to 
disintegrate the great and ancient body of 
Christendom, but if we come to see him tri- 
umphant we may be certain that that body, from 
causes much vaster than such as he could con- 
trol, is furnishing him with sustenance and form- 
ing for him a congenial soil — and that is as 
much as to say that we are dying. 



283 



XXXIII 

ON KNOWING THE PAST 

An apprehension of the past demands two kinds 
of information. 

First, the mind must grasp the nature of 
historic change and must be made acquainted 
with the conditions of human thought in each 
successive period, as also with the general aspect 
of its revolution and progression. 

Secondly, the actions of men, the times, that 
is the dates and hours of such actions, must be 
strictly and accurately acquired. 

Neither of these two foundations upon which 
repose both the teaching and the learning of 
history is more important than the other. Each 
is essential. But a neglect of the due emphasis 
which one or the other demands, though both be 
present, warps the judgment of the scholar and 
forbids him to apply this science to its end, 
which is the establishment of truth. 
284 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

History may be called the test of true phi- 
losophy, or it may be called in a very modern 
and not very dignified metaphor, the object 
lesson of political science; or it may be called 
the great story whose interest is upon another 
plane from all other stories because its irony, its 
tragedy and its moral arc real, were acted by 
real men, and were the manifestation of God. 

But whatever brief and epigrammatic sum- 
mary we make to explain the value of history to 
men, that formula still remains an imperative 
formula for them all, and I repeat it: the end 
of history is the establishment of truth. 

A man may be ever so accurately informed 
as to the dates, the hours, the weather, the 
gestures, the type of speech, the very words, 
the soil, the colour, that between them all would 
seem to build up a particular event. But if he 
is not seized of the mind which lay behind all 
that was human in the business, then no syn- 
thesis of his detailed knowledge is possible. He 
cannot give to the various actions which he 
knows their due sequence and proportion ; he 
285 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

knows not what to omit, nor what to enlarge 
upon, among so many, or rather a potentially 
infinite number of facts, and his picture will not 
be (as some would put it) distorted: it will be 
false. He will not be able to use history for 
its end, which is the establishment of truth. 
All that he establishes by his action, all that he 
confirms and makes stronger, is untruth. And 
so far as truth is concerned, it would be far 
better that a man should be possessed of no 
history than that he should be possessed of his- 
tory ill-stated as to the factor of human mo- 
tive. 

A living man has to aid his judgment and to 
guide him in the establishment of truth, con- 
temporary experience. Other men are his daily 
companions. The consequence and the living 
principles of their acts and of his own are fully 
within his grasp. 

If a man is rightly Informed of all the past 
motive and determining mind from which the 
present has sprung, his Information will il- 
lumine and expand and confirm his use of that 
286 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

present experience. If he know nothing of the 
past his personal observation and the testimony 
of his own senses are, so far as they go, an un- 
shakable foundation. But if he brings in aid of 
contemporary experience an appreciation of the 
past which is false because it gives to the past a 
mind which was not its own, then he will not 
only be wrong upon that past, but he will tend 
to be wrong also in his conclusions upon the 
present. He will for ever read into the plain 
facts before him origins and predetermining 
forces which do not explain them and which 
are not connected with them in the way he 
imagines. And he will easily come to regard 
his own society, which as a wholly uninstructed 
man he might fairly though insufficiently have 
grasped, through a veil of illusion and of false 
philosophy, until at last he cannot even see the 
things before his eyes. In a word, it is better 
to have no history at all than to have history 
which misconceives the general direction and 
the large lines of thought in the immediate and 
the remote past. 

287 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

This being evidently the case one is tempted 
to say that a just estimate of the revolution and 
the progression of human motive in the past is 
everything to history, and that an accurate 
scholarship in the details of the chronicle, in 
dates especially, is of wholly inferior impor- 
tance. Such a statement would be quite false. 
Scholarship in history, that is an acquaintance 
with the largest possible number of facts, and 
an accurate retention of them in the memory, 
is as essential to this study as of that other 
background of motive which has just been ex- 
amined. 

The thing is self-evident if we put an ex- 
treme case. For if a man were wholly ignorant 
of the facts of history and of their sequence, he 
could not possibly know what might lie behind 
the actions of the past, for we only obtain com- 
munion with that which is within and that which 
is foundational in human action by an observa- 
tion of its external effect. 

A man's history, for instance, is sound and 
on the right lines if he have but a vague and 
288 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

general sentiment of the old Pagan civilisation 
of the Mediterranean so long as that sentiment 
corresponds to the very large outline and is in 
sympathy with the main spirit of the affair. 
But he cannot possess so much as an impression 
of the truth if he has not heard the names of 
certain of the great actors, if he is wholly un- 
acquainted with the conception of a City State, 
and if the names of Rome, of Athens, of Anti- 
och, of Alexandria, and of Jerusalem have never 
been mentioned to him. 

Nor will a knowledge of facts, however slight, 
be valuable; contrariwise it will be detrimental 
and of negative value to his judgment if ac- 
curacy in his knowledge be lacking. If he were 
invariably inaccurate, thinking that red which 
was blue, inverting the order of any two events 
and putting without fail in the summer what 
happened in winter, or in the Germanics what 
took place in Gaul, his facts would never corre- 
spond with the human motive of them, and his 
errors upon externals would at once close his 
avenues of access towards internal motive and 
289 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

suggest other and non-existent motive in its 
place. 

It is, of course, a childish error to imagine 
that the knowledge of a time grows out of a 
mere accumulation of observation. External 
things do not produce ideas, they only reveal 
them. And to imagine that mere scholarship 
is sufficient to history is to put one's self on 
a level with those who, in the sphere of politics, 
for instance, ignore the necessity of political 
theory and talk muddily of the " working " of 
institutions — as though it were possible to judge 
whether an institution were working ill or not 
when one had no ideal that institutions might be 
designed to attain. But though scholarship is 
not the source of judgment in history, it is the 
invariable and the necessary accompaniment of 
it. Facts, which (to repeat) do not produce 
ideas but only reveal or suggest them, do none 
the less reveal and suggest them, and form the 
only instrument of such suggestion and revela- 
tion. 

Scholarship, accurate and widespread, has 
290 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

this further function : that it lends stuff to gen- 
eral apprehension of the past, which, however 
just, is the firmer, the larger and the more in- 
tense as the range of knowledge and its fixity in- 
crease. And scholarship has one more func- 
tion, which is that it connects, and it connects 
with more and more precision in proportion as 
it is more and more detailed, the tendency of the 
mind to develop a general and perhaps justly 
apprehended idea into imaginary regions : for 
the mind is creative ; it will still make and spin, 
and if you do not feed it with material it will 
spin dreams out of emptiness. 

Thus a man will have a just appreciation of 
the thirteenth century in England ; he will per- 
haps admire or will perhaps be repelled by its 
whole spirit according to his temperament or his 
acquired philosophy ; but in either case, though 
his general impression was just, he will tend to 
add to it excrescences of judgment which, as 
the process continued, would at last destroy the 
true image were not scholarship there to come 
in perpetually and check him in his conclusions. 
291 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

He admires it, he will tend to make it more na- 
tional than it was, to forget its cruelties because 
what is good in our own age is not accompanied 
by cruelty. He will tend to lend it a science it 
did not possess because physical science is in 
our own time an accompaniment of greatness. 
But if he reads and reads continually, these 
vagaries will not oppress or warp his vision. 
More and more body will be added to that spirit, 
which he does justly but only vaguely know. 
And he will at last have with the English thir- 
teenth century something of that acquaintance 
which one has with a human face and voice: 
these also are external things, and these also are 
the product of a soul. 

Indeed — though metaphors are dangerous in 
such a matter — a metaphor may with reservation 
be used to describe the effect of the chronicle, 
of research and of accurate scholarship in the 
science of history. A man ill provided with 
such material is like one who sees a friend at a 
distance; a man well provided with it is like a 
man who sees a friend close at hand. Both are 
292 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

certain of the identity of the person seen, both 
are well founded in that certitude ; but there are 
errors possible to the first which are not possi- 
ble to the second, and close and intimate ac- 
quaintance lends to every part of judgment a 
surety which distant and general acquaintance 
wholly lacks. The one can say something true 
and say it briefly: there is no more to say. 
The other can fill in and fill in the picture, until 
though perhaps never complete, it is a symp- 
totic to completion. 

To increase one's knowledge by research, to 
train one's self to an accurate memory of it, 
does not mean that one's view of the past is con- 
tinually changing. Only a fool can think, for 
instance, that some document somewhere will be 
discovered to show that the mass of the people 
of London had for James II an ardent venera- 
tion, or that the national defence organised by 
the Committee of Public Safety during the 
French Revolution was due to the unpopular 
tyranny of a secret society. But research in 
either of these cases, and a minute and in- 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

creasing acquaintance with detail, does show one 
London largely apathetic in the first place, and 
does show one large sections of rebellious feel- 
ing in the armies of the Terror. It permits one 
to appreciate what energy and what initiative 
were needed for the overthrow of the Stuarts, 
and to see from how small a body of wealthy and 
determined men that policy proceeded. It per- 
mits one to understand how the battles of '93 
could never have been fought upon the basis of 
popular enthusiasm alone; it permits one to 
assert without exaggeration that the autocratic 
power of the Committee of Public Safety and 
the secrecy of its action was a necessary con- 
dition of the National defence during the French 
Revolution. 

One might conclude by saying what might 
seem too good to be true : namely, that minute 
and accurate information upon details (the 
characteristic of our time in the science of his- 
tory) must of its own nature so corroborate 
just and general judgments of the past, that 
through it, when the modern phase of wilful 
294 



ON KNOWING THE PAST 

distortion is over, mere blind scholarship will 
restore tradition. 

I say it sounds too good to be true. But 
three or four examples of such action are al- 
ready before us. Consider the Gospel of St. 
John, for instance, or what is called " the 
Higher Criticism " of the old Hebrew litera- 
ture, and ask yourselves whether modern schol- 
arship has not tended to restore the long and 
sane judgment of men, which, when that schol- 
arship was still imperfect, seemed to imperil. 



XXXIV 

THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

I HAVE long desired to make some protest 
against the attitude which the Very Learned 
take towards literary evidence. I know that the 
Very Learned chop and change. I know that 
they are in this country about fifty years behind 
the Continent. I know that their devotion to 
the extraordinary unintelligent German methods 
will soon be shaken by their discovery that new 
methods are abroad — in both senses of the 
word " abroad " : for new methods have been 
abroad, thank Heaven, for a very long time. 

But I also know that a mere appeal to reason 
will be of very little use, so I propose here to 
give a concrete instance, and I submit it to the 
judgment of the Very Learned. 

The Very Learned when they desire to fix the 
date or the authenticity or both of a piece of 
literature, adopt among other postulates, these : 
296 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

(1) That tradition doesn't count. 

(2) That common sense, one's general knowl- 
edge of the time, and all that multiplex integra- 
tion which the same mind effects from a million 
tiny data to a general judgment, is too tiny to 
be worthy of their august consideration. 

(3) That the title "Very Learned" (which 
gives them their authority) is tarnished by any 
form of general knowledge and can only be 
acquired by confining oneself to a narrow field 
in which any fool could become an absolute mas- 
ter in about two years. 

These are their negative postulates in dealing 
with a document. 

As to their positive methods, of one hun- 
dred insufficient tricks I choose in particular 
these : 

(1) The establishment of the date of the 
document against tradition and general air, by 
allusion discovered within it. 

(2) The conception that all unusual events 
recorded in it are mythical, and therefore 
necessarily anterior to the document. 

297 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

(3) The supposition that religions emo- 
tion, or indeed emotion of any kind, vitiates 
record. 

(4) The admission of a single piece of co- 
relative documentary evidence to destroy the 
reader's general judgment. 

(5) The fixed dogma that most writers of 
the past have spent most of their time in 
forging. 

Now to test these nincompoops I will con- 
sider a contemporary document which I know a 
good deal about, called The Path to Rome. It 
professes to be the record of a journey by one 
H. Belloc in the year 1901 from Toul in Lor- 
raine to Rome in Italy. I will suppose that 
opus to have survived through some accident 
into a time which preserved few contemporary 
documents, but which had, through tradition 
and through a knowledge of surrounding cir- 
cumstance, a popular idea of what the opening 
of the twentieth century was like, and a pathetic 
belief that Belloc had taken this journey in the 
year 1901. 

298 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

This is how the Very Learned would proceed 
to teach the vulgar a lesson in scepticism. 

'' A critical examination of the document has 
confirmed me in the conclusion that the so-called 
Path to Rome is composed of three distinct ele- 
ments, which I will call A, W, and ^." (See 
my article E.H.R., September 3, 113, pp. 233 
et seq. for 0. For W, see Furth in Die Quellen 
Critik, 2nd Semestre, 3117.) 

Of these three documents A is certainly much 
earlier than the rather loose criticism of Polter 
in England and Bergmann upon the Continent 
decided some years ago in the Monograph of the 
one, and the Discursions which the other has 
incorporated in his Neo-Catholicism in the 
Twenty-Second Century. 

The English scholar advances a certain in- 
ferior limit of A.D. 2208, and a doubtful superior 
limit of A.D. 2236. The German is more pre- 
cise and fixes the date of A in a year certainly 
lying between 2211 and 2217. I need not 
here recapitulate the well-known arguments 
with which this view is supported (See Z.M. fs. 
299 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

(Mk. 2) Arch, and the very interesting article 
of my friend Mr. Gouch in the Pursuits of the 
A.S.) I may say generally that their argument 
reposes upon two considerations : 

(1) The Centime, a coin which is mentioned 
several times in the book, went out of circula- 
tion before the middle of the twenty-first cen- 
tury, as we know from the only extant letter 
(undoubtedly genuine) of Henri Perro to the 
Prefect of Aude. 

This gives them their superior limit. But it 
is the Inferior Limit which concerns us most, 
and here the argument reposes upon one phrase. 
(Perkins' edition, p. .) This phrase is 

printed in italics, and runs, " Deleted hy the 
Censor.'''' 

It is advanced that we know that a censor- 
ship of books was first established in America 
(where, as I shall show. The Path to Rome was 
written) in the year 2208, and there is ample 
evidence of the fact that no such institution 
was in actual existence before the twenty-sec- 
ond century in the English-speaking countries, 
300 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

though there is mention of it elsewhere in the 
twenty-first, and a fragment of the twentieth 
appears to allude to something of the kind in 
Russia at that time. (Baker has confused the 
Censorship of Books with that of Plays, and an 
unknown form of art called " Morum " ; prob- 
ably a species of private recitation.) 

Now Dr. Blick has conclusively shown in his 
critical edition of the mass of ancient litera- 
ture, commonly known as The Statute Booh, 
that the use of italics is common to distinguish 
later interpolation. 

This discovery is here of the first importance. 
Not only does it destroy the case for the phrase, 
" Deleted hy the Censor,'" as a proof of an In- 
ferior Limit, 2208, but in this particular in- 
stance it is conclusive evidence that we have 
interpolation here, for it is obvious that after 
the establishment of a Censorship the right 
would exist to delete a name in the text, and 
a contemporary Editor would warn the reader 
in the fashion which he has, as a fact, employed. 

So much for the negative argument. We 
301 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

can be certain after Dr. Blick's epoch-making 
discovery that even the year 2208 is not our 
Inferior Limit for A, but we have what is much 
better, conclusive evidence of a much earlier 
Superior Limit, to which I must claim the 
modest title of discoverer. 

There is a passage in A (pp. 170-171) 
notoriously corrupt, in which a dramatic dia- 
logue between three characters, the Duchess, 
Major diaries and Clara, is no longer read- 
able. All attempts to reconstitute it have 
failed, and on that account scholars have too 
much tended to neglect it. 

Now I submit that though the passage is 
hopelessly corrupt its very corruption affords 
us a valuable indication. 

The Duchess, in a stage indication, is made 
to address " Major Charles." It is notorious 
that the term "Major" applied to a certain 
functionary in a religious body probably affili- 
ated to the Jesuits, known to modern scholars 
under a title drawn from the only contemporary 
fragment concerning it, as " Old Booth's 
302 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

Ramp." This society was suppressed in Amer- 
ica in the year 2012, and the United States 
were the last country in which it survived. 

No matter how correct, therefore, the text 
is in this passage, we may be certain that even 
the careless scribe took the contemporary exist- 
ence of a " major " for granted. And we may 
be equally certain that even our existing version 
of A incorporated in the only text we possess, 
was not written later than the first years of the 
twenty-first century. We have here, therefore, 
a new superior limit of capital importance, but, 
what is even more important, we can fix with 
fair accuracy a new inferior limit as well. 

In the Preface (whose original attachment 
to A is undoubted) we have the title " Captain 
Monologue," p. XII (note again the word 
" Captain," an allusion to " Booth's Ramp," 
and in an anonymous fragment (B.M. m.s.s., 
336 N., (60)), bearing the title, "' Club Gossip," 
I have found the following conclusive sentence: 
" He used to bore us stiff, and old Burton in- 
vented a brand new title for him, ' Captain 
303 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

Monologue,' about a year before he died, which 
the old chap did an hour or two after dinner on 
Derby Day." 

Now this phrase is decisive. We have sev- 
eral allusions to " dinner " (in all, eight, and a 
doubtful ninth, tabulated by Ziethen in his 
Corpus. Ins. Am.). They all refer to some 
great public function the exact nature of which 
is lost, but which undoubtedly held a great place 
in political life. At what intervals this func- 
tion occurred we cannot tell, but the coincident 
allusion to Derby Day settles it. 

The only Lord Derby canonized by the 
Church died in 1960 and the promulgation of 
Beatification (the earliest date that would per- 
mit the use of the word " day " for this Saint) 
was issued by Pope Urban XV in May, 2003. 
It is, therefore, absolutely certain that A was 
written at some time between the years 2003 to 
2012. Nearer than that I do not profess to fix 
it; but I confess that the allusion (p. 226) to 
drinking coffee coupled with the corresponding 
allusion to drinking coffee in a license issued 
304 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

for a Lockhart's Restaurant in 2006 inclines me 
to that precise year as the year in which A ap- 
peared, or at any rate was written. 

I think in the above I have established the 
date of A beyond dispute. 

I have no case to bring forward of general 
conclusions, and I know that many scholars will 
find my argument, however irrefutable, disturb- 
ing, for it is universally admitted that exclud- 
ing the manifestly miraculous Episodes of the 
Oracle, The Ointment of Epinal, The View of 
the Alps over a Hundred Miles, etc., which are 
all of them properly referred to in W. and 6 
respectively, A itself contains numerous pas- 
sages too closely connected with the text to be 
regarded as additions, yet manifestly legendary 
— such as the perpetual allusions to spirits, and 
in particular to a spirit called " Devil," the in- 
ordinate consumption of wine, the gift of 
tongues, etc. etc. But I submit that a whole 
century, especially in a time which pullulated 
with examples of credulity, such as the " Flying 
Men," "The Telephone," "Wireless Teleg- 
305 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

raphy," etc., is ample to allow for the growth 
of these mythical features. 

I take it, therefore, as now established, that 
A in its entirety is not later than 2012 and 
probably as early as 2006. Upon W I cannot 
yet profess to have arrived at a decision, but 
I incline to put it at about forty years later, 
while $ (which includes most of the doggerel 
and is manifestly in another style, and from 
another hand) is admitted to be at least a 
generation later than " W " itself. 

In a further paper I shall discuss the much- 
disputed point of authorship, and I shall at- 
tempt to show that Belloc, though the subject 
of numerous accretions, was a real historical 
figure, and that the author of A may even have 
worked upon fragments preserved by oral tradi- 
tion from the actual conversation of that char- 
acter. 

That is how the damned fools write : and with 
brains of that standard Germans ask me to deny 
my God. 

306 



XXXV 

THE FANATIC 

" I asked Old Biggs (as the Duke of Racton used to be 
called) what he thought of Charlie Wilson. Old Biggs an- 
swered, 'Man like that's one of two things: a Fana.t\c or a 
Fa.naiic.' I thought this very funny." — St. Germans Sport- 
ing Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 186. 

This is a kind of man whom we all love and 
yet all desire to moderate. He is excessive 
only in good, but his excess therein is danger- 
ous. He proceeds from less to more; first ir- 
ritated, then exasperated, then mad. He will 
not tolerate the necessary foibles of mankind. 
No, nor even their misunderstandings. He 
himself commonly takes refuge in some vice or 
other, but a small one, and from this bastion 
defends himself against all comers. 

The Fanatic will exaggerate the operations 

of war. If it be necessary in the conquest of 

a province to murder certain women, he will 

cry shame bhndly, without consideration of 

307 



THE FANATIC 

martial conditions or remembrance that what 
we do in war is absolved by indemnities there- 
after following. It is the same with the death 
of children in warfare, whether these be 
starved to death in concentration camps or 
more humanely spitted, or thrown down wells, 
or dealt with in some other fashion, such as 
the braining of them against walls and gate- 
posts : nothing will suit the Fanatic in these 
matters but a complete and absolute absten- 
tion from them, without regard to strategy 
or tactics or any other part of military science. 
Now many a man shall argue against practices 
of one sort or another, as against excesses. 
But the Fanatic is nothing so reasonable, 
being bound by a law of his nature or 
rather a lack of law, to violent outburst 
with no restraint upon it, and to impotent 
gnashings. 

It is so also in affairs of State when peace 

reigns, for the Fanatic is for ever denouncing 

what all men know must be and making 

of common happenings an uncommon crime. 

308 



THE FANATIC 

Thus, when a minister shall borrow of a money- 
lender certain sums which this last generously 
puts before him without condition or expense, 
what must your Fanatic do, but poke and pry 
into the whole circumstance, and when the 
usurer has his just reward, and is made a Peer 
to settle our laws for us, the Fanatic will go 
vainly about from one newspaper to another 
seeking which shall print his foolish " protest " 
(as he calls it). Mark you also that the 
Fanatic is quite indifferent to this : that his 
foolishness is of no effect. He will roar in an 
empty field as loud as any bull and challenge 
all men to meet him, and seems well pleased 
whether they come or no. 

It is of the fanatical temper to regard some 
few men as heroes, or demigods, and then again, 
these having failed in something, to revile them 
damnably. Thus by the old religious sort you 
will find the Twelve Apostles in the Gospel very 
foolishly revered and made much of as though 
they were so many Idols, but let one of these 
(Judas to wit) show statesmanship and a manly 
30^ 



THE FANATIC 

sense, and Lord I how the Fanatic does rail at 
him! 

So it is also with foreign nations. The 
Fanatic has no measure there and speaks of 
them as though they were his province, seeing 
that it is of his essence never to comprehend 
diversity of circumstance or measure. Thus 
our cousins oversea will very properly burn alive 
the negroes that infest them in those parts, and 
their children and young people will, when the 
negro has been thus despatched, collect his bones 
or charred clothing to keep the same in their 
collections, which later they compare one with 
another. This is their business not ours, and 
has proved in the effect of great value to their 
commonwealth. But the Fanatic will have none 
of it. To hear him talk you might imagine 
himself a negro or one that had in his own flesh 
tasted the fire, and in his rage he will blame 
one man and another quite indiscriminately: 
now the good President of these people (Mr. 
Roosevelt as he once was), now the humble in- 
strument of justice who should have put a match 
310 



THE FANATIC 

to the African. And all this without the least 
consideration of those surrounding things and 
haps which made such dealing with negroes a 
very necessary thing. 

There is nothing workable or of purpose in 
what this man does. He is for ever quarrelling 
with other men for their lack of time or memory 
or even courtesy to himself, for on this point 
he is very tender. He wearies men with re- 
peating to them their own negotiations, as 
though these were in some way disgraceful. 
Thus if a man has taken a sum of money in 
order to write of the less pleasing characters of 
his mother ; or if he has sold his vote in Parlia- 
ment, or if he has become for his own good 
reasons the servant of some one weathier than 
he, or if he has seen fit to deal with the enemies 
of his country, the Fanatic will blurt out and 
blare such a man's considered action, hoping, it 
would seem, to have some support in his mere 
raving at it. But this he never gets, for man- 
kind in the lump is too weighty and reasonable 
to accept any such wildness. 
311 



THE FANATIC 

There Is no curing the Fanatic, neither with 
offers of Money nor with blows, nor is there 
any method whatsoever of silencing him, save 
imprisonment, which, in this country, is the 
method most commonly taken. But in the main 
there is no need to act so violently by him, see- 
ing that all men laugh at him for a fool and 
that he will have no man at his side. Com- 
monly, he is of no effect at all, and we may re- 
main his friend though much contemptuous of 
him, since contempt troubles him not at all. 
But there are moments, and notably in the 
doubt of a war, when the Fanatic may do great 
ill indeed. Then it is men's business to have 
him out at once and if necessary to put him to 
death, but whether by beheading, by hanging, or 
by crucifixion it is for sober judges to decide. 

The Irish are very fanatical, and have driven 
from their country many landlords formerly 
wealthy who were the support and mainstay of 
all the island. It may be seen in Ireland how 
fanaticism can Impoverish. Upon the other 
hand, the people of the Mile End Road and 
31^- 



THE FANATIC 

round by the north into Hackney Downs and 
so southward and westward into the City of 
London by Houndsditch are not fanatical at all, 
and enjoy for their reward an abounding pros- 
perity. 



XXXVI 

A LEADING ARTICLE 

After the failure of the numerous conferences 
which have been held between Charles Stuart 
and the Commissioners of Parliament, and after 
a trial in Westminster Hall the incidents of 
which it would be painful to recall, the Court 
appointed for the purpose has reached a con- 
clusion with which we think the mass of Eng- 
lishmen will, however reluctantly, agree. The 
courtesy and good feeling upon which we pride 
ourselves in our political life seem to have been 
strangely forgotten during the controversies of 
the last few months. It would be invidious to 
name particular instances, and we readily ad- 
mit that the circumstances were abnormal. 
Feeling ran high, and with Englishmen at least, 
who are accustomed to call a spade a spade, 
strong words will follow upon strong emotions ; 
but we can hope that the final decision of the 
314 



A LEADING ARTICLE 

Court will have put behind us for ever one of 
the most critical periods of discussion, with aU 
its deplorable excesses and wild and whirling 
words, which we can remember in modern times. 

Upon the principle of the conclusion to which 
the Court has come there is a virtual unanimity. 
Men as different as Colonel Harrison on the one 
hand and Mr. Justice Bradshaw on the other, 
Mr. Cromwell — whom surely all agree in re- 
garding as a representative Englishman — and 
that very different character, Mr. Ireton, whom 
we do not always agree with, but who certainly 
stands for a great section of opinion, are at 
one upon a policy which has received no serious 
criticism, and recommends itself even to such 
various social types as the blunt soldier, Colonel 
Pride, and the refined aristocrat. Lord Grey of 
Groby. 

But though a matter of such supreme im- 
portance to the mass of the people, a measure 
which it is acknowledged will bring joy to the 
joyless, light to those who sit in darkness, and 
a new hope in their old age to fifteen millions 
315 



A LEADING ARTICLE 

of British working men and women, may be 
unanimously agreed to in principle, it is un- 
fortunately possible to defeat even so beneficent 
a measure by tactics of delay ajid by a pro- 
longed criticism upon detail. The Government 
have therefore, in our opinion, acted wisely in 
determining to proceed with due expedition to 
the execution of Charles Stuart, and we do not 
anticipate any such resistance, even partial and 
sporadic, as certain rash freelances of politics 
have prophesied. There was indeed some time 
ago some doubt as to the success of a policy to 
which the Government was pledged, and in spite 
of the strong and disciplined majority which 
they commanded in the House, in spite of the 
fact that the House was actually unanimous 
upon the general lines of that policy, many peo- 
ple up and down the country, who did not fully 
comprehend it, had been led to act rashly and 
even riotously against its proposals. All that 
we may fairly say is now over, and we trust that 
the Government will have the firmness to go 
forward with a piece of work in which it now 
316 



A LEADING ARTICLE 

undoubtedly has the support of every class of 
society. 

We should be the last to deny the impor- 
tance of meeting any serious objection in detail 
that still remains. Thus the inhabitants of 
Charing Cross have a legitimate grievance when 
they say that the scene of the execution will 
be hidden from them by the brick building which 
stands at the northern end of Whitehall, but 
they must remember that all practical measures 
involve compromise and that if their point of 
view alone had been considered and the scaffold 
were to be erected upon the north of that an- 
nex, the crowd for wliich the Home Secretary 
has made such wise provision by the erection of 
strong temporary barriers in the Court of the 
Palace would have no chance of attending at 
the ceremony. 

We confess that the more serious point seems 
to us to arise on the Bishop of London's sug- 
gestion that only the clergy of the Established 
Church should be present upon the platform, 
and we very much fear that this pretension — 
317 



A LEADING ARTICLE 

in our view a very narrow and contemptible 
one — will receive the support of that large 
number of our fellow citizens which is still at- 
tached to the Episcopal forms of Christianity. 
But we take leave to remind them, and the 
Bishop of London himself, that the present 
moment, when the Free Churches have so fully 
vindicated their rights to public recognition, is 
hardly one in which it is decent to press these 
old-fashioned claims of privilege. 

There is a third matter which we cannot 
conclude without mentioning: we refer to the 
attitude of Charles Stuart himself. While the 
matter was still stth judice we purposely re- 
frained from making any comment, as is the 
laudable custom, we are glad to say, in the 
country. But now the sentence has been pro- 
nounced we think it our duty to protest against 
the attitude of Charles Stuart during the last 
scene of this momentous political controversy. 
He is too much of an English gentleman and 
statesman to exaggerate the significance of our 
criticism, or to fail to understand the spirit in 
318 



A LEADING ARTICLE 

which it is offered, for that is entirely friendly, 
but he must surely recognise by tliis time, that 
such petty ebullitions of temper as he exhibited 
in refusing to plead and in wearing his hat in 
the presence of men of such eminence as Mr. 
Justice Bradshaw were unworthy of him and of 
the great cause which he represents. He would 
have done well to take a lesson from the humble 
tipstaff of the Court, who, though not required 
to do so by the Judges, instantly removed his 
cap when they appeared and only put it on 
again when he was conducting the prisoner back 
after the rising of Court. 

Finally, we hope that all those who have been 
permitted by the Home Secretary to be present 
at Whitehall upon next Tuesday will remember 
our national reputation for sobriety and judg- 
ment in great affairs of the State, and will be 
guilty of nothing that might make it necessary 
for the Government to use severe measures ut- 
terly repugnant to the spirit of English liberty. 



319 



XXXVII 
THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

Mr. Herod, whose death has just been an- 
nounced by a telegram from Lyons, was one of 
the most striking and forceful personalities of 
our time. 

By birth he was a Syrian Jew, suffering 
from the prejudice attaching to such an origin, 
and apparently with little prospect of achiev- 
ing the great place which he did achieve in the 
eager life of our generation. 

But his indomitable energy and his vast com- 
prehension of men peraiitted him before the 
close of his long and useful life to impress him- 
self upon his contemporaries as very few even 
of the greatest have done. 

Our late beloved sovereign, Tiberius, perhaps 

the keenest judge of men in the whole Empire, 

is said to have remarked one evening in the 

smoking-room to his guests, when Herod had 

320 



THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

but recently left the apartment : " Gentlemen, 
that man is the comer-stone of my Eastern 
policy," and the tone in which His Majesty ex- 
pressed this opinion was, we may be sure, that 
not only of considered judgment, but of equally 
considered reverence and praise. 

It is a striking testimony to Mr. Herod's 
character that while he was still quite unknown 
(save, of course, as the heir of his father) he 
mastered the Greek and Latin tongues, and we 
find in his diary the shrewd remark that as the 
first was necessary to culture, so was the sec- 
ond to statesmanship. 

It would have been impossible to choose a 
more difficult moment than that in which the 
then unknown Oriental lad was entrusted by the 
Imperial Government with the task which he has 
so triumphantly accomplished. The Levant, as 
our readers know, presents problems of peculiar 
difficulty, and though we can hardly doubt that 
the free and democratic genius of our country 
would at last have solved them, we owe it to 
the memory of this remarkable personality that 



THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

the solution of them should have been so tri- 
umphantly successful. 

We will not here recapitulate the obscure 
and often petty intrigues which have combined 
to give the politics of Judasa and its neighbour- 
hood a character of anarchy. It is enough to 
point out that when Mr. Herod was first en- 
trusted with his mission the gravest doubts were 
entertained as to whether the cause of order 
could prevail. The finances of the province 
were in chaos, and that detestable masquerade 
of enthusiasm to which the Levantines are so 
deplorably addicted, especially on their " re- 
ligious " side, had baffled every attempt to re- 
establish order. 

Mr. Herod's father (to whom it will be re- 
membered the Empire had entrusted the begin- 
nings of this difficult business), though undoubt- 
edly a great man, had incurred the hatred of 
all the worst and too powerful forces of dis- 
order in the district. His stern sense of justice 
and his unflinching resolution in one of the last 
affairs of his Hfe, when he had promulgated his 
322 



THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

epoch-making edict to regulate the infantile 
death-rate — a scientific measure grossly misun- 
derstood and unfortunately resented by the 
populace — had left a pecuharly difficult inher- 
itance to the son. The women of the lower 
classes (as is nearly always the case in these 
social reforms) proved the chief obstacle, and 
legends of the most fantastic character were — 
and still are — current in the slums of Tiberias 
with regard to Mr. Herod Senior. When, some 
years later, he was struggling with a painful 
disease which it needed all his magnificent 
strength of character to master, no sympathy 
was shown him by the provincials of the 
Tetrarchy, and, to their shame be it said, the 
professional and landed classes treasonably lent 
the weight of their influence to the disloyal 
side. 

It was therefore under difficulties of no com- 
mon order that Mr. A. Herod, the son, took 
over the administration of that far border 
province which, we fear, will cause more trouble 
before its unruly inhabitants are absorbed in 
323 



THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

the mass of our beneficent and tolerant im- 
perial system. 

As though his public functions were not 
burden enough for such young shoulders to 
bear, the statesman's private life was assailed 
in the meanest and most despicable fashion. 
His marriage with Mrs. Herodias Philip — to 
whose lifelong devotion and support Mr. Herod 
bore such beautiful witness in his dedication of 
Stray Leaves from Galilee — was dragged into 
the glare of publicity by the less reputable 
demagogues of the region, causing infinite pain 
and doing irreparable injury to a most united 
and sensitive family circle. The hand of the 
law fell heavily upon more than one of the 
slanderers, but the evil was done, and Mr. 
Herod's authority, in the remote country dis- 
tricts, especially, was grievously affected for 
some years. 

Through all these manifold obstacles Mr. 

Herod found or drove a way, and finally 

achieved the position we all look back to with 

such gratitude and pride in the really dangerous 

324 



THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

crisis which will be fresh in our readers' memory. 
It required no ordinary skill to pilot the policy 
of the Empire through those stormy three days 
in Jerusalem, but Mr. Herod was equal to the 
task, and emerged from it permanently estab- 
lished in the respect and affection of the Ro- 
man people. It is a sufficient testimony to his 
tact and firmness on this occasion that he earned 
in that moment of danger the lasting f riendsliip 
and regard of Sir Pontius Pilate, whose firmness 
of vision and judgment of men were inferior 
only to that of his lamented sovereign. 

Unlike most non-Italians and natives gener- 
ally, Mr. Herod was an excellent judge of 
horseflesh, and his stables upon Mount Carmel 
often carried to victory the colours — rose 
tendre — of " Sir Caius Gracchus," the nom-de- 
guerre by which the statesman preferred to be 
known on the Turf. 

Mr. Herod's aesthetic side was more highly 
developed than is commonly discovered in level- 
headed men of action. He personally super- 
vised the architectural work in the rebuilding 
325 



THE OBITUARY NOTICE 

of Tiberias, and, of the lighter arts, was a 
judge of dramatic or " expressional " dancing. 

During the earlier years of this eventful 
career Mr. Herod's life was greatly cheered 
and brightened by the companionship of his 
stepdaughter, Miss Salome Pliilip (now Lady 
Caiaphas), whose brilliant salon so long adorned 
the Quirinal, and who — we are exceedingly glad 
to hear — has been entrusted with that labour of 
love, the editing of her stepfather's life, letters, 
and verses; for Mr. Herod was no mean poet, 
and we may look forward with pleasurable ex- 
pectation to his hitherto unpublished elegiacs 
on the beautiful scenery of his native land. 

By the provisions of Mr. Herod's will he is 
to be cremated, and the ceremony will take 
place on a pyre of cedar-wood in the Place 
Bellecour at Lyons. 



326 



XXXVIII 

THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

A weekly feature of the Carthaginian Messenger, quoted 
from its issue of March 15, 220 b. c. 

It is quite a pleasure to be in dear old Rome 
again after a week spent upon an important 
mission which your readers are already ac- 
quainted with, in the Tuscan country. All 
that drive through Etruria was very delightful 
and the investigation will undoubtedly prove 
of the greatest use. But what a difference it 
is to be back in the sparkle and gaiety of the 
Via Sacra. Every day one feels more and 
more how real the entente is. Probably no na- 
tions have become faster friends than those 
who have learnt to respect each other in war, 
and though the Romans were compelled to ac- 
cept our terms, and to undertake the difficult 
administration of Sicily with money furnished 
by the Carthaginian Government, all that was 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

more than twenty years ago and the memory of 
it does not rankle novy. Indeed, I think I may 
say that the Roman character is a pecuHarly 
generous one in this regard. They know what 
a good fight is, and they enjoy it — none better 
— but when it is over no one is readier to shake 
hands and to make friends again than a Ro- 
man. I was talking it over with dear little 
Lucia Balba the other day and I thought she 
put it very prettily. She said: 

Est autem amicitia nihil aliud, nisi omnium divinarum 
huminarumque rerum cockalorumque Romanorum et jejo- 
rum concinnatio! 

Was it not charming.'' 

Of course there is a little jealousy — no more 
than a pout ! — about Hasdrubal's magnificent 
work in Spain, but every one recognises what a 
great man he is, and it was only yesterday that 
M. Catulus (the son of our fine old enemy Luta- 
tius ) said to me with a sigh : " The reason we 
Romans cannot do that kind of thing is because 
we cannot stick together. We arc for ever 
fighting among ourselves. Just look at our 
328 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

history ! " On the other hand, I can't think 
that our mixture of democracy and common 
sense would suit the Latin temperament, with 
its verve and nescio quid, which make it at the 
same time so incalculable and so fascinating. 
Every nation must have its own advantages and 
drawbacks. We are a little too stolid, perhaps, 
and a little too businesslike, but our stolidity 
and our businesslike capacity have founded Col- 
onies over the whole world and established a 
magnificent Empire. The Romans are a little 
too fond of " glory " and give way to sudden 
emotion in a fashion which seems to us peril- 
ously like weakness, but no one can deny that 
they have established a wonderfully methodical 
and orderly system of roads all over Italy, and 
that their capital is still the intellectual centre 
of the world. 

Talking of that I ought to pay a tribute to 
the Roman home and to Roman thrift. We 
hear too much in our country of the Roman 
amphitheatre and all the rest of it. What 
many Carthaginians do not yet know is that the 
329 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

stay-at-home sober Roman is the backbone of 
the whole place. He hates war as heartily as 
we do, and though his forms of justice are very 
different from ours he is a sincere lover of right- 
dealing according to his lights. It is due to 
such men that Rome is, after ourselves, the chief 
financial power in the world. 

But you will ask me for more interesting 
news than this sermon. Well ! Well ! I have 
plenty to give you. The Debates in the Senate 
are as brilliant and, I am afraid, as theatrical 
as usual. Certainly the Romans beat us at 
oratory. To hear Flaccus deliver a really 
great speech about the introduction of Greek 
manners is a thing one can never forget ! Of 
course, it will seem to you in Carthage very 
unpractical and very " Roman," and it is true 
that that kind of thing doesn't make a nation 
great in the way we have become great, but 
it is wonderful stuff to hear all the same — and 
such a young man too ! The Senate has, how- 
ever, none of our ideas of order, and the marvel 
is how they get through their work at all. 
330 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

There are no Suffetes, and sometimes you will 
hear five or six men all talking at once and 
gesticulating in that laughable Italian fashion 
which our caricaturists find so valuable ! 

Those of my readers who run over to Rome 
two or three times a year for the Games will 
be interested to hear that the great Aurelian 
house near the New Temple of Saturn (the 
rogues with their " Temples ! " But still there 
is a good deal of real religion left in Rome) is 
being pulled down and a splendid one is being 
put in its place upon the designs of a really re- 
markable young architect, Pneius Caius Agric- 
ola. He is the nephew, by the way, of Sopher 
Masher Baal, whom we all know so well at 
Carthage, and who is, I think, technically, a 
Carthaginian citizen. Possibly I am wrong, 
for I remember a delightful dinner with him 
years ago among our cousins overseas, and he 
may very possibly be Tyrian. If so, and if 
these humble lines meet his eye, I tender him 
my apologies. But anyhow, his nephew is a 
very remarkable and original artist whom all 
331 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

Rome is eager to applaud. When the new 
Aurelian House is finished it will have a fa9ade 
in five orders, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, heavy 
Egyptian on the fourth story, and Assyrian on 
the top, the whole terminating in a vast pyra- 
mid, which is to have the appearance of stone, 
but which will really be a light erection in thin 
plaster slabs. 

Last Wednesday we had the review of the 
troops. You may imagine how the Roman 
populace delighted in that! There is a good 
deal that is old-fashioned to our ideas in the 
accouterments, and it was certainly comic to 
see an " admiral " leading his " sailors " past 
the saluting post like so many marines ! But 
it is always a pleasant spectacle for a warm- 
hearted man to see the humbler classes of Rome 
picnicking in true Roman fashion upon the 
Campus Martins and cheering their sons and 
brothers. The army is very popular in Rome, 
although the men are paid hardly anything — a 
mere nominal sum. The Romans do not come 
up to our standard of physique, and I am afraid 
332 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

the Golden Legion would laugh at them. But 
they are sturdy little fellows, and not to be 
despised when it comes to marching, or turn- 
ing their hands to the thousand domestic de- 
tails of the camp ; moreover, they are invariably 
good-humoured, and that is a great charm. 

It is unfortunately impossible to officer all 
the troops with gentlemen, and that is a draw- 
back of which thoughtful Romans are acutely 
conscious. It is on this account that there is 
none of that cordial relation between officer and 
man which we take for granted in our service. 
An intelligent and travelled Roman said to me 
the other day : " How I envy you your Cartha- 
ginian officers ! Always in training ! Always 
ready ! Always urbane ! " But we must re- 
member that our service is not so numerous as 
theirs. 

I must not ramble on further, for the post 
is going, and you know what the Roman post 
is. It starts when it feels inclined, and the 
delivery is tantum quantum, as we say in Italy. 
I have to be a good hour before the official time 
333 



THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 

or risk being told by some shabbily uniformed 
person that my letter missed through my own 
fault! Next week I hope to give you an in- 
teresting account of Sapphira Moshetim's 
debut. She is a Roman of the Romans, and 
I was quite carried away ! Such subtlety ! 
Such declamation ! I hope to be her herald, 
for she is to come to Carthage next season, and 
I am sure she will bear out all I say. 



334 



XXXIX 

OPEN LETTER TO A YOUNG 
PARASITE 

My dear Boy: 

As you know, I was your father's closest 
friend for many years, and I have watched 
with interest, but I confess not without anxiety, 
your first attempts in a career of which he was 
in my young days the most brilliant exemplar. 

You will not take it ill in a man of my years 
and in one as devoted to your family as I am 
and have proved myself to be, if I tender you 
a word of advice. 

The profession upon which you have en- 
gaged is one of the most difficult in the world. 
It does not offer the great prizes which attend 
the best forms of cheating, bullying, and black- 
mail, and at the same time it is higlily limited, 
and offers opportunities to only a handful of 
the finer souls. 

335 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

Nevertheless, I am not writing this to dis- 
suade you for one moment from its pursuit. 
There is something in the fine arts difficult to 
define, but very deeply felt by every one, which 
makes them of themselves a sort of compensa- 
tion for their economic limitations. The artist, 
the poet, and the actor expect to live, and hope 
to live well, but each one knows how few are the 
prizes, and each in his heart expects something 
more than a mere money compensation. So 
should it be in that great profession which you 
have undertaken in the light of your father's 
example. 

In connection with that, I think it my duty 
to point out to you that even the greatest suc- 
cess in this special calling is only modest com- 
pared with successes obtained at the Bar, in 
commerce, or even in politics. You will never 
become a wealthy man. I do not desire it for 
you. It should be yours, if you succeed, to en- 
joy wealth without its responsibility, and to 
consume the good things our civilisation pre- 
sents to the wealthy without avarice, without 
336 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

the memory of preceding poverty, and, above 
all, without the torturing necessity of consider- 
ing the less fortunate of your kind. 

You must not expect, my dear young man, 
to leave even a modest competence ; therefore 
you must not expect to marry and provide for 
children. The parasite must be celibate. I 
have never known the rule to fail, at least in 
our sex. You will tell me, perhaps, that in the 
course of your career, continually inhabiting 
the houses of the rich, studying their manners, 
and supplying their wants, you cannot fail to 
meet some heiress ; that you do not see why, this 
being the case, you should not marry her, to 
your lasting advantage. 

Let me beg you, with all the earnestness in 
my power, to put such thoughts from you 
altogether. They are as fatal to a parasite's 
success as early commercial bargaining to that 
of a painter. You must in the first ten years 
of your exercises devote yourself wholly to your 
great calling. By the time you have done that 
you will have unlearn'ed or forgotten all that 
337 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

goes with a wealthy marriage ; its heavy re- 
sponsibilities will be odious to you, its sense of 
dependence intolerable. Moreover (though you 
may think it a little cynical of me to say so), I 
must assure you that no one, even a man with 
your exalted ideal, can make a success of mar- 
ried life unless he enters it with some consider- 
able respect for his partner. Now, it is easy 
for the man who lays himself out for a rich mar- 
riage (and that is a business quite different 
from your own, and one, therefore, on which I 
will not enter) to respect his wife. Such men 
are commonly possessed, or soon become pos- 
sessed, of a simple and profound religion, which 
is the worship of money, and when they have 
found their inevitable choice, her substance, or 
that of her father, surrounds her with a halo 
that does not fade. You could hope for no 
such illusions. The very first year of your vo- 
cation (if you pursue it industriously and hon- 
estly) will destroy in you the possibility of any 
form of worship whatsoever. No, it will be 
yours to take up with dignity, and I trust in 
338 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

some permanent fashion, that position of para- 
site which is a proper and necessary adjunct 
in every wealthy family, and which, when it is 
once well and industriously occupied, I have 
never known to fail in promoting the happiness 
of its incumbent. 

Let me turn from all this and give you a 
£ew rough rules which should guide you in 
the earlier part of your way. You will not, 
I am sure, reject them lightly, coming as they 
do from a friend of my standing and experi- 
ence. Young men commonly regard the ad- 
vice of their elders as something too crude to 
be observed. It is a fatal error. What they 
take for crudity is only the terseness and 
pressure of accumulated experience. 

The first main rule is to take note of that 
limit of insult and contempt beyond which your 
master will revolt. Note carefully what I say. 
No one, and least of all the prosperous, espe- 
cially when their prosperity is combined with 
culture, will long tolerate flattery. A certain 
indifference, spiced with occasional contempt 
339 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

and not infrequent insolence, is what those of 
jaded appetite look for in any permanent com- 
panion. Without a full knowledge of this 
great truth, hundreds of your compeers have 
fallen early upon the field, never to rise again. 
For if it is true that the wealthy and the refined 
demand much seasoning in their companionship, 
it is equally true that there is a fairly sharp 
boundary beyond which they suddenly revolt. 
Henry Bellarmine was thrust out of the Congle- 
tons' house for no other reason. The same 
cause led to poor Ralph Pagberry's imprison- 
ment, and I could quote you hosts of others. 

My next rule is that you should never, under 
any temptation of weather, or ill health, or 
fatigue, permit yourself really and thoroughly 
to bore either your patron or any one of his 
guests, near relatives, or advisers. As it is not 
easy for a young man to know when he is boring 
the well-to-do, let me give you a few hints. 

When the rich begin to talk one to the other 
in your presence without noticing you, it is a 
sign. When they answer what you are saying 
840 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

to them in a manner totally irrelevant, it is an- 
other. When they smile very sympathetically, 
but at something else in the room, not your face, 
it is a third. And when they give an interested 
exclamation, such as, " No doubt. No doubt," 
or, " I can well believe it," such expressions hay- 
ing no relation to what passed immediately be- 
fore, it is a fourth. 

Add to these criteria certain plain rules, such 
as never upon any account to read aloud to the 
rich unless they constrain you to do so, never 
to sing, never to be the last to leave the room 
or to go to bed, and you will not sin upon this 
score. 

Let me give you a further rule, which is, to 
agree with the women. It is very difficult for 
one of our sex to remember this, because our 
sex loves argument and is with difficulty per- 
suaded that contradiction and even controversy 
are intolerable to ladies. Mould your con- 
versation with them in such a fashion that they 
may hear from you either a brilliant account 
at second hand of themselves or a very odious 
341 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

one of their friends ; but do not be so foolish 
as to touch upon abstract matters, and if these 
by any chance fall into the conversation, simply 
discover your companion's real or supposed 
position, and agree vrith it. 

I have little more to add. Be courteous to 
all chance guests in the house. You will tell 
me, justly enough, that the great majority of 
them will be unimportant or poor or both. But 
the point is that you can never tell when one 
of them may turn out to be, either then or in 
the future, important or rich or both. The 
rule is simple and absolute. Cultivate courtesy, 
avoid affection ; use the first upon all occasions, 
and forget so much as the meaning of the 
second. 

Lastly, drink wine, but drink it in modera- 
tion. I have known admirably successful para- 
sites who were total abstainers, but only in the 
houses of fanatics with whom this peculiar habit 
was a creed. The moment these successful men 
passed to other employers, I was interested to 
note that they at once abandoned the foolish 



TO A YOUNG PARASITE 

trick. But if it is important not to fall into 
the Mohammedan foible of total abstinence from 
wine, it is, if anything, even more important 
never upon any occasion whatsoever to exceed in 
it. Excess in wine is dangerous in a degree to 
the burglar, the thief, the money-lender, the 
poisoner, and many professions other than your 
own, but in that which you have chosen it is not 
dangerous, but fatal. Let such excess be ap- 
parent once in the career of a young parasite, 
and that career is as good as done for. I urge 
this truth upon you most solemnly, my dear 
lad, by way of ending. 

I wish you the best of luck, and I am your 
poor father's devoted friend and your own. 



343 



XL 

ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

The best noise in all the world is the rattle of 
the anchor chain when one comes into harbour 
at last, and lets it go over the bows. 

You may say that one does nothing of the 
sort, that one picks up moorings, and that let- 
ting go so heavy a thing as an anchor is no 
business for you and me. If you say that you 
are wrong. Men go from inhabited place to 
inhabited place, and for pleasure from station 
to station, then pick up moorings as best they 
can, usually craning over the side and grab- 
bing as they pass, and cursing the man astern 
for leaving such way on her and for passing so 
wide. Yes, I know that. You are not the only 
man who has picked up moorings. Not by 
many many thousands. Many moorings have 
I picked up in many places, none without some 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

sort of misfortune; therefore do I still prefer 
the rattle of the anchor chain. 

Once — to be accurate, seventeen years ago 
— I had been out all night by myself in a boat 
called the Silver Star. She was a very small 
boat. She had only one sail; she was black 
inside and out, and I think about one hundred 
years old. I had hired her of a poor man, and 
she was his only possession. 

It was a rough night in the late summer when 
the rich are compelled in their detestable grind 
to go to the Solent. When I say it was night 
I mean it was the early morning, just late 
enough for the rich to be asleep aboard their 
boats, and the dawn was silent upon the sea. 
There was a strong tide running up the Medina. 
I was tired to death. I had passed the Royal 
Yacht Squadron grounds, and the first thing 
I saw was a very fine and noble buoy — new- 
painted, gay, lordly — moorings worthy of a 
man! 

I let go the halyard very briskly, and I 
nipped forward and got my hand upon that 
345 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

great buoy — ^there was no hauling of it in- 
board ; I took the little painter of my boat and 
made it fast to this noble buoy, and then im- 
mediately I fell asleep. In this sleep of mine 
I heard, as in a pleasant dream, the exact mo- 
tion of many oars rowed by strong men, and 
very soon afterwards I heard a voice with a 
Colonial accent swearing in an abominable man- 
ner, and I woke up and looked — and there was 
a man of prodigious wealth, all dressed in 
white, and with an extremely new cap on his 
head. His whiskers also were white and his 
face bright red, and he was in a great passion. 
He was evidently the owner or master of the 
buoy, and on either side of the fine boat in which 
he rowed were the rowers, his slaves. He could 
not conceive why I had tied the Silver Star to 
his magnificent great imperial moorings, to 
which he had decided to tie liis own expensive 
ship, on which, no doubt, a dozen as rich as him- 
self were sailing the seas. 

I told him that I was sorry I had picked up 
his moorings, but that, in this country, it was 
346 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

the common courtesy of the sea to pick up any 
spare moorings one could find. I also asked 
him the name of his expensive ship, but he only 
answered with curses. I told him the name of 
my ship was the Silver Star. 

Then, when I had cast off, I put out the 
sweeps and I rowed gently, for it was now 
slack water at the top of the tide, and I stood 
by while he tied his magnificent yacht to the 
moorings. When he had done that I rowed un- 
der the stern of that ship and read her name. 
But I will not print it here, only let me tell 
you it was the name of a ship belonging to a 
fabulously rich man. Riches, I thought then 
and I think still, corrupt the heart. 

Upon another occasion I came with one com- 
panion across the bar of Orford River, out of a 
very heavy wind outside and a very heavy sea. 
I just touched as I crossed that bar, though 
I was on the top of the highest tide of the year, 
for it was just this time in September, the 
highest springs of the hunter's moon. 

My companion and I sailed up Orford River, 
347 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

and when we came to Orford Town we saw a 
buoy, and I said to my companion, " Let us 
pick up moorings." 

Upon the bank of the river was a long line 
of men, all shouting and howling, and warning 
us not to touch that buoy. But we called out 
to them that we meant no harm. We only 
meant to pick up those moorings for a moment, 
so as to make everything snug on board, and 
that then we would take a line ashore and lie 
close to the wharf. Only the more did those 
numerous men (whom many others ran up to 
join as I called) forbid us with oaths to touch 
the buoy. Nevertheless, we picked up the lit- 
tle buoy (which was quite small and light) and 
we got it in-board, and held on, waiting for our 
boat to swing to it. But an astonishing thing 
happened ! The boat paid no attention to the 
moorings, but went careering up river carrying 
the buoy with it, and apparently dragging the 
moorings along the bottom without the least 
difficulty. And this was no wonder, for we 
found out afterwards that the little buoy had 
348 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

only been set there to mark a racing point, and 
that the weights holding the line of it to the bot- 
tom were very light and few. So it was no 
wonder the men of Orford had been so angry. 
Soon it was dark, and we replaced the buoy 
stealthily, and when we came in to eat at the 
Inn we were not recognised. 

It was on this occasion that was written the 



song: 



The men that hved in Orford stood 
Upon the shore to meet me; 

Their faces were Hke carven wood, 
They did not wish to greet me. 
etc. 



It has eighteen verses. 

I say again, unless you have moorings of 
your own — an extravagant habit — picking up 
moorings is always a perilous and doubtful 
thing, fraught with accident and hatred and 
mischance. Give me the rattle of the anchor 
chain ! 

I love to consider a place which I have never 
yet seen, but wliich I shall reach at last, full of 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

repose and marking the end of those voyages, 
and security from the tumble of the sea. 

This place will be a cove set round with high 
hills on which there shall be no house or sign 
of men, and it shall be enfolded by quite deserted 
land ; but the westering sun will shine pleasantly 
upon it under a warm air. It will be a proper 
place for sleep. 

The fair-way into that haven shall lie behind 
a pleasant little beach of shingle, which shall 
run out aslant into the sea from the steep hill- 
side, and shall be a breakwater made by God. 
The tide shall run up behind it smoothly, and 
in a silent way, filling the quiet hollow of the 
hills, brimming it all up like a cup — a cup of 
refreshment and of quiet, a cup of ending. 

Then with what pleasure shall I put my small 
boat round, just round the point of that shingle 
beach, noting the shoal water by the eddies and 
the deeps by the blue colour of them where the 
channel runs from the main into the fair-way. 
Up that fair-way shall I go, up into the cove, 
and the gates of it shall shut behind me, head- 
350 



ON DROPPING ANCHOR 

land against headland, so that I shall not see 
the open sea any more, though I shall still hear 
its distant noise. But all around me, save for 
that distant echo of the surf from the high 
hills, will be silence; and the evening will be 
gathering already. 

Under that falling light, all alone in such a 
place, I shall let go the anchor chain, and let it 
rattle for the last time. My anchor will go 
down into the clear salt water with a run, and 
when it touches I shall pay out four lengths or 
more so that she may swing easily and not drag, 
and then I shall tie up my canvas and fasten 
all for the night, and get me ready for sleep. 
And that will be the end of my sailing. 



351 



OCT 12 1912 



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